So we’re writing a limerick poem.
Limericks might seem throwaway. But there’s a science to their playfulness.
LINES THAT RHYME
Any poem with lines that rhyme has a ‘rhyme scheme’, where A represents the first set of rhyming lines, B the second and so on.
A traditional limerick has the rhyme scheme AABBA, where lines 1, 2 and 5 end with a rhyme, and lines 3 and 4 end with a different rhyme.
For example, here in children’s author Constance Levy’s jolly limerick:
How awkward when playing with glue
To suddenly find out that you
Have stuck nice and tight
Your left hand to your right
In a permanent how-do-you-do!
Although Constance doesn’t do it above, some limerick poets use the same word to rhyme lines 1 and 5. If Constance had, line 5 would end “glue” as well.
BUILD TO PAY-OFF
Meter is how the stress of syllables builds the flow of a poem. The meter of a limerick should build from a set-up to a fun pay-off. Without that pay-off, similar to the punchline of a joke, what comes before isn’t worth anything. Pay-off counts.
Like here in Edward Lear’s mischievous limerick of 1846, where by the end of line 2 we want to know what has happened to the Old Man’s beard:
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”
Meter is all to do with stressed and unstressed syllables. Limericks traditionally start unstressed (above: “There”), with the second syllable being the stressed (above: “was”). Think of it like the gallop of a horse: clip-CLOP clip-CLOP clip-CLOP.
(Note the repetition of “beard” in lines 1 and 5, as I mention above.)
SUBJECT
Finally, some limericks are naughty, even filthy. Though most are just a little bit silly. Let’s aim for silly over filthy at Creative Constraints Club.
Or the man from Nantucket might blush...
Happy writing
Rob