Absurd and August limericks

Back from holiday (Ten days in Brittany. Very nice, thanks. I should write a blog about it, you say? Oh, OK) and there have been two limerick challenges on the subreddit since I last looked. The words to rhyme in limericks were absurd (22nd August) and pentastichophobe (29th August).

There are different challenges with these words. There are loads of rhymes for absurd, so getting a poem that avoids obvious rhymes is the key. Or, since there are so many rhymes, why not try and pack a load into the piece?

For the second word, the first thing to do was find out what pentastichophobe means. A quick Google told me that it’s someone who fears or hates five-line poems. So they wouldn’t be a fan of limericks, at least not in their normal presentation. On the other hand, Edward Lear would often present his limericks¹ as four lines with the two short lines as a single line. So playing with the formatting is a possible way to go.

Aren’t all limericks absurd?

Taking inspiration from the ‘young fellow named Tate’ limerick I quoted in my first limerick post, I built this limerick from the bottom up. Once I had the last line, I had to reach it.

I collected a dozen rhymes for absurd before the final line “my word! That furred bird is absurd” emerged.

Other words for fur – hair, pelt, mane, wool, fuzz… none rhyme with each other, but pelt and felt give the rhymes for the two short lines. But what one syllable bird? A hen – which also has a lot of synonyms of various length to put into the first two lines.

A fear the potential dangers of genetic engineering came to me as the subject for this one. If I’m writing about furry birds, then some sort of tinkering with genetics has been going on. You can’t trust scientists.

I had a couple of goes at filling in the first lines of the limerick, then read it out to Mrs S. She didn’t like my first draft.

Try harder.

It was the first two lines that were the problem, so a rewrite to introduce the issue of genetic engineering. A blurred line between the species and the piece is done. Using the word twixt was necessary to keep my poetic licence intact.

The line twixt the species is blurred
They've bred hairy chickens, I've heard
I can say, now I've felt
A hen with a pelt:
"My word! That furred bird is absurd!"

A fear of five line poems

The second challenge is a different matter. Any long and unusual word² needs to be shoehorned into the meter of a limerick, and it is sometimes necessary to draw attention to the shoehorning. But since this word is about poetry, the limerick should also address the fact that this is a poem. Self-referential poems and songs are usually something I don’t like³.

I decided to play with the format of the limerick. If five lines is the problem, then we can change the number of lines and still get a silly poem out of it. And to whom do we write poetry? Usually, a subject of love. What sort of poem? How about a sonnet?

What’s a sonnet, Daddy?

A sonnet is a 14-line poem with a strict rhyme and meter scheme. So, a bit like a limerick. William Shakespeare wrote at least 154 sonnets⁴, going against the contemporary norm of idealistic love and introducing the concepts of lust and infidelity. That said, the best-known line from his sonnets (Sonnet 18) is a heart-felt tribute to a lover:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate

You’re supposed to keep to 5 lines in a limerick. How can you write a 14-line limerick?

You cheat.

Drafting and shaping the limerick

When I was drafting the limerick, I had the middle section quickly. Since bonnet rhymes with sonnet, the couplet “I’ve a bee in my bonnet – I’ll write her a sonnet” serves well. Then I wrote the numbers 1 to 14 and drafted a couple of last lines that could be written one word per line to reach 14.

The rhyming words had to end in ‘-obe’. Luckily, there are plenty of those including, handily, a couple of real places. It’s a tradition in limericks to start with a place-name at the end of the first line. I chose Latrobe, a town in Victoria, Australia⁵. And what do we want to see when we finally meet the love of our life? Why, to see them disrobe.

When I wrote the last line – “And maybe then I’ll get to see her disrobe” I was one word short, so I split the second line of the limerick into two, and so I’d got a 14 line poem:

I love a young girl from Latrobe
A beauty-
  But pentastichaphobe
I've a bee in my bonnet
I'll write her a sonnet!
And
Maybe
Then
I'll
Get 
To
See
Her
Disrobe

1. They weren’t known as limericks until the 1890s, after Lear’s death. ↩︎
2. It was ultracrepidarian a couple of weeks ago. I rhymed that with hairy ‘un and onion. It makes sense, honest! ↩︎
3. I’m looking at you, Robbie Williams, with your “That’s a good line to take it to the bridge” nonsense. ↩︎
4. The 154 collected as one, plus six in his plays, plus no doubt he wrote others that are lost. Same goes for his limericks. ↩︎
5. There’s also a Latrobe in Tasmania and Pennsylvania. ↩︎