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The clerihew is a relatively new poetry form introduced by Edmund Clerihew Bentley in 1905. It is usually a single quatrain of light verse rhyming aabb, without a standard meter. The first line usually ends with a name, often one difficult to rhyme with, and comes up with a ridiculous rhyme for it in the second line. At the SCP, we usually require meter. Could the lack of meter in the clerihew be an attempt to capture a charming sense of school-boy doggerel or is it just a lack of skill and aversion to the modern stigma placed on tradition? At any rate, this contest seeks a specifically metrical clerihew just for the fun of it.
Talbot Hook has submitted the below metrical clerihew to get the ball rolling:
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The ever straight-shooting Diogenes,
No stranger to creatures’ biologies,
Gave Platonic depiction a lickin’
By presenting him with a plucked chicken.
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Post your metrical clerihew in the comments section below. The meter does not have to be the same as Mr. Hook’s above.
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A Clerihew Gone Amok
by E. Cleridew Basu
He is one of those about whom these days is written very little.
I guess, because his reputation, like Edward C. Bentley’s, was quite brittle.
A compatriot of James Thurber, in that terribly dismal era,
he was less like Ezra Pound than he was like Yogi Berra;
and yet these days, except for a few things, like green tea, pasta salad, and cash,
I would like to get a line or two from Frederic Ogden Nash.
As Agent James Bond, Sean Connery
Was gorgeous but always quite ornery
With lovely blue eyes, he was every girl’s spy
You can count me as one of them, honestly.
Father winter throws autumn blaze
Hold the moment in place
December shakes autumn
December tree crowns have lost their shape
Father Winter throws autumn blaze,
hold the moment in place.
December shakes autumn.
December tree crowns have lost their shape.
I have no doubt the worthy Francisco José de Goya
Y Lucientes would have had the brains to be a lawyer
But counsel’s wise opinion was, when all is said and done,
That artists can make money too and have a lot more fun.
The Irish fairies of folklore, the Sidhe;
Capture kids and refuse to let them free.
Obscured in the medows’s vibrant bluebells;
The fables live and cast their cursed spells.
Alessandro. Bottticelli
Painted women large in buttocks and belly.
Seeing the ads in Vogue, he’d not find sexy
Models so anorexy.
For you SEC football fans:
Bama’s Crimson Tide
Has a team deep and wide.
Fear Big Al,
Beat you he shall.
Auburn’s War Eagle ,
A mascot regal,
Swoops with a scream
Just like the team.
LSU
Is fun to boo,
But let’s admit, Coach Kelly
Has fire in the belly.
U of Mizzou
Is called “The Zoo,”
But mention their football crew
And everybody says, “Who?”
Texas A&M
Will kick your (ahem)
Someday, but not the way
They currently play.
Vanderbilt
Every year gets kilt.
Academics is their forte,
Not football sport.
Florida
Is like the bullfighting corrida
Where you are the toro
And they’re the matador-o.
U of Georgia
Last year had a winning orgy-a.
It was sweet
To be unbeat.