Carrie Clickard: Limerick Writers Anonymous

Happy St. Paddy's Day! 

I'm afraid you won't find a single pint of beer (green or otherwise) at Today's Little Ditty, but raise your glass if you know what you will find . . .

Photo: Sean an Scuab

Yeah, y'ar right!  With a touch of Leprechaun magic, you can be transported to the 16 posts that live at Limerick Alley.

It's been over a year since we've entertained any new ones, but as luck would have it, Carrie Clickard is here to satisfy your thirst for this looks-easy-but-isn't poetry form. She's filled her paddy wagon with a ditty-load of 'em, so let's join her for the ride, shall we?  It'll be grand!

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Welcome to another Rhyme Crime Investigation

... and the first official meeting of Limerick Writers Anonymous.


There’s a rustle of shuffling feet and a surreptitious slurping of coffee as the meeting comes to order.  Stepping up to a rickety podium in front of the thicket of folding chairs, a determined but ill at ease woman clears her throat and says: “Hi, my name is Carrie, and I’m a limerick writer.”

What? No chorus of comradely hello’s back?  Sigh.  It’s hard to find anyone who’ll stand up and proudly declare themselves a limerick writer—which is a pity for a poetic form that can count Elizabeth I, Thomas Aquinas, Aristophanes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Rudyard Kipling and Shakespeare among its practitioners. A swift search of YouTube will also offer up limericks recited by Garrison Keillor, Michael Palin, Christopher Hitchens and even a NASA astronaut.

No, really—one of the questions on the NASA application asked astronaut candidates to describe their selection process in a tweet, a haiku or a limerick.  If you watch the video you'll discover his limerick is a bit of a metrical shambles, but as a poet, how cool is it knowing that there’s one part of the astronaut’s application process we could ACE? I’m trading in my comfy sweats for a spacesuit.

So why has this once-proud five line AABBA form ended up in the doggerel house?  It might have just a bit to do with content.  Morris Bishop expressed the problem wittily in a limerick of his own:

The limerick is furtive and mean;
You must keep her in close quarantine,
Or she sneaks to the slums
And promptly becomes
Disorderly, drunk, and obscene.

It’s true.  The limericks everyone seems to remember have lines that end in Nantucket. (No, no, I’m not going to repeat it. Look it up if you must.)  But it’s not just bad behavior that gets limerick writers sneered at, it’s bad SCANSION. Time and again you find limericks limping along with scraggly line length, verb inversions, forced meter a regular rogue’s gallery of Rhyme Crime perpetrators.  You’d think with only five lines it would be easy-peasy to keep rhyme crisp, clean and correct. But like a certain bishop in Hong Kong, you’d be wrong.

Researching for this post I found a surprising number of clunkers from poets whose pen I’m not worthy to touch. Like:

There is a poor sneak called Rossetti

As a painter with many kicks met he

With more as a man

But sometimes he ran

And that saved the rear of Rossetti.


                                                       Dante Gabriel Rossetti

and

There was a professor named Chesterton
Who went for a walk with his best shirt on
Being hungry he ate it
but lived to regret it
and ruined his life for his digestion.

                                                       W S Gilbert

Ouch.  I could add a dozen more examples, but if you’ve been following along with the Rhyme Crime posts, you’re probably already diagnosing the problems and fixing them in your head.  “Ate it” and “regret it” don’t rhyme, even in a Cockney accent.  “Kicks met he” is an inversion you wouldn’t get away with today.  The lines aren’t consistent in syllable length.  And whether “best shirt on” and digestion rhyme is debatable.  So if two such noted poets can slip up, can we hope to do better?  We can but try, as my English teacher used to say.

Don't miss a beat

Back in the day, limericks most often used anapestic meter  – two short syllables followed by a long one – three feet in lines 1, 2 and 5, and only two  feet in lines 3 and 4. So:

(A)     Da da dum  da da dum  da da dum

(A)     Da da dum  da da dum  da da dum

(B)     Da da dum  da da dum

(B)     Da da dum  da da dum

(A)     Da da dum  da da dum  da da dum

Anapestic verse was a favorite of Dr. Seuss, and thus holds a special place in my heart, but if it isn’t your cup of tea, that’s ok.  Modern limericks can be written in your meter-of-choice but the rules still apply.  Rhythm must be consistent, unforced and you need to have a uniform number of beats in rhyming lines. If you have to put the em-PHAS-is on the wrong syl-LA-ble, or swallow a syllable to make things fit, go back and rewrite. You can do better.

Now before you throw out the baby with the bathwater, remember we’re ruling out weak word choices, not the joy of wordplay. The fun Ogden Nash has in this verse is enough to make any critic overlook the one extra beat.

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill can hold more than his beli-can.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week
But I’m damned if I see how the heli-can.

The same can be said for Mark Twain’s clever abbreviated verse.  Be sure you read  “Co.” as “company” and do the same at the end of lines 2 and 5 or you’ll miss the joke.

A man hired by John Smith and Co.
Loudly declared that he’d tho.
Men that he saw
Dumping dirt by the door
The drivers, therefore, didn’t do.  *

Funny enough to forgive those clunky lines 3 and 4? You decide.

* Michelle here: for Twain-challenged folk like myself, read company/thump any/dump any.


Wait, is it form or funny that’s more important?

Excellent question.

This limerick is simply sublime
It’s flawless in meter and rhyme.
As for wit, pun or thought?
It expresses but naught

and to write it took acres of time.

                                                       Anonymous

Like any poem, a good limerick will communicate with the reader, expressing a meaning, a feeling, or both.  Whether your intent is jovial, snide, silly, bawdy, romantic or educational, if you don’t get your point across, all the reader ends up with is a collection of syllables.  You’ve got five lines and a handful of syllables to do it in. Use them wisely.


Scare your readers:

Each night father fills me with dread

when he sits on the foot of my bed;

I’d not mind that he speaks

in vile gibbers and squeaks

but for seventeen years he's been dead.

                                                       Edward Gorey

Teach them something:

It filled Galileo with mirth

To watch his two rocks fall to Earth.
He gladly proclaimed,

"Their rates are the same,
And quite independent of girth!

                                                       American Physical Society contest entry

Break their hearts:

My life has become a motif

of daily compassion and grief,

of watching the ends

of lovers and friends

whose candles have been far too brief.

                         Lawrence Schimel 
                         From … Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Metres,
                         edited by Annie Finch and Alexandra Oliver:

Leave them laughing:

A young girl at college, Miss Breeze,

Weighted down by B.A.s and Lit.D's,

Collapsed from the strain,

Said her doctor, "It's plain

You are killing yourself — by degrees!"

                                                       Anonymous

And we’re doing all this, why?

Clearly some good hard work and poetry chops go into limerick writing, when you’re doing it right. What are you going to do with them now that you’ve got those little witty jewels polished to perfection?  Send them out into the world to earn a living, naturally.

Try the Saturday Evening Post Limerick Contest.  Six times a year the Saturday Evening Post holds a limerick contest based on one of their iconic cover illustrations.  Winners are published in the print magazine, online and win a small cash prize.  A select few talented runners up get published on the website too, like someone we all know and love here at Today’s Little Ditty, Ms. Michelle Heidenrich Barnes.  You can read her fabulous limerick on the Saturday Evening Post site here and learn about how to enter the contest yourself here.

What about The Washington Post’s Style Invitational weekly contest that rotates between headlines, punkus (haikus with puns), limericks and other fun forms?

And, drumroll please, if you happen to be both a limerick fan and a word nerd like me, here’s an irresistible opportunity: The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form.  Uh huh, you heard that right.  Their goal is to “write at least one limerick for each meaning of each and every word in the English language. Our best limericks will clearly define their words in a humorous or interesting way, although some may provide more entertainment than definition, or vice versa.”  They’re currently working on Aa through Ge, and expect to be completed in 2076.

I am so going to do this.  Maybe I’ll start with E for “Equations” like the brainiac who turned this mathematical equation into a limerick:

It’s not a trick.  There IS a limerick in all those number.  Here’s a little clue: Think of words we might use in place of numbers, for example people often say a “dozen” eggs instead of twelve.

Give up? (I certainly did.) So, here's the answer:

A dozen, a gross, and a score

Plus three times the square root of four

Divided by seven

Plus five times eleven

Is nine squared and not a bit more.

                                                       Jon Saxton

That’s some wicked clever thinking and some pretty mad limerick skills as well.  Feeling inspired? What are you still doing here?  Go on, get out there and WRITE.

Maestro? A little St. Patrick’s Day exit music please …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QdbeM2JWYE

Cheers, Carrie!  I had a whale of a good time!

Read Carrie's other Rhyme Crime posts on Today's Little Ditty:

• Igor Meter: Step One– PICK A BEAT   

• Nearly Nellie: Step Two– MAKE IT STICK

• Wrench-it Ralph: Step Two (continued)– Unwrench Your Rhyme 

• Singsong Sal: Step Three– CHANGE IT UP

• Scanning the Seuss Man

• Making Good Use of Made-Up Words

Carrie L. Clickard is an internationally published author and poet.  Her first picture book, VICTRICIA MALICIA, debuted in 2012 from Flashlight Press. Forthcoming books include MAGIC FOR SALE (Holiday House, 2017), DUMPLING DREAMS (Simon and Schuster 2017) and THOMAS JEFFERSON & THE MAMMOTH HUNT (Simon and Schuster, 2018). Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals including Spider, Muse, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Havok, Myriad Lands, Clubhouse, Spellbound, Penumbra, Haiku of the Dead, Underneath the Juniper Tree, Inchoate Echoes, and The Brisling Tide.  

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I sure have been enjoying all the ode poems inspired by Helen Frost's DMC challenge! Featured poems this week included "Ode to a Dewdrop" by LeeAnn Blankenship, "Ode to My Coffee Cup" by Rebekah Hoeft, "Ode to Grapefruit!" by Cindy Breedlove, and "Ode to My Mother's Popcorn Pan" by Doraine Bennett. You can read Kat Apel's and Carol Varsalona's odes at their blogs today, and enjoy student odes by Jone MacCulloch's Poetry Rocks group at Check It Out. View all of the ode poems contributed so far (and add your own) on our March 2017 padlet. 

Robyn Hood Black has her own St. Patrick's/Poetry Friday party going at Life on the Deckle Edge. See you there for this week's roundup!

Carrie Clickard: Making Good Use of Made-Up Words

Hear that siren? 

That's because Carrie Clickard just pulled up for another visit to Today's Little Ditty.

Today's Rhyme Crime Investigation comes in response to a reader's request for rhyming poetry mentor texts that use made-up words or words with unusual spelling.

While Carrie's posts always leave me with a smile on my face, this one includes so much fun verse, I suggest you get ready for a full-scale smile muscle workout!

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Runcible spoons and slithy toves –  

Making good use of made-up words

During our last Rhyme Crime Investigation, Scanning the Seuss Man, I touched on the subject of invented words. Seuss uses them widely to great effect. Not just Seuss—many of our beloved children's poets, past and present, have played with creating their own words with delightful results. So the question arises, how do poets know when made up words are the smart choice for a poem and when they’re only a crutch?

Now for those of you who have followed previous Rhyme Crime Investigations, you might already have a handle on some of the wrong reasons to use an invented word.  If the only reason you’re creating a word is because no other rhyme works for a particular couplet, you’re on thin ice. The word you create could be brilliant, but it’s more likely to be a noticeable “fake word” that will stand out to both editors and readers—and not in a good way.

Likewise, if you’re altering a word’s shape or pronunciation to fix your meter or to correct a problem with syllable stress, you’ll finish your poem faster but you won’t be fooling anybody.  It can be painfully obvious to see when writers have taken the easy route. You’re better off putting in the hard work of rewriting to eliminate those “weasel” words.

So, you might be wondering, is it best to avoid  using nonsense words altogether? Not at all. The world of poetry would be poorer without them. Some of my own best reading moments were stumbling over gems like the “runcible” spoon in Lear’s "The Owl and the Pussycat" and the marvelous made-up vocabulary of Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky."  But what makes the difference between these poems and the quick fix failures, is that the poets used invented language intentionally, with thought and logic, to make their work stronger or funnier.

So how exactly do they do that?

ONE: The Grand Conceit

Let’s start with what I’m calling The Grand Conceit, the big idea, where an author creates words as part of the core concept of a poem or book. In this case new words are not simply whimsical vocabulary tacked on for a laugh. The invented words form the backbone of the entire work. Take Jack Prelutsky's Scranimals (Greenwillow Books, 2002). The title itself is a clue to where Jack’s going: Scrambled + Animals = Scranimals. The book is a romp through a world filled with chimerical plant-animal hybrids. Prelutsky scrambles not just their names, but the creatures themselves. From Porcupineapples to Toucanemones, you'll be hard pressed to pick a favorite. There’s the elegant Rhinocerose: 

Oh, beautiful RHINOCEROSE,
So captivating, head to toes,
So aromatic, toes to head,
Enchantress of the flower bed …

– Excerpt from "Oh beautiful RHINOCEROSE" © 2002 by Jack Prelutsky

and the lowly but adorable Potatoad: "On a bump beside a road/Sits a lowly POTATOAD..."  or maybe the Pandaffodil or … maybe you should pick up a copy and see for yourself.

In On Beyond Zebra, again we find that the author’s invented words are the stars of the story. Dr. Seuss creates not just new words but new letters: “My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends.”  This idea, the grand conceit of a whole new alphabet brings us "FLOOB" the first letter of  Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs, and the letter "YUZZ" is used for Yuzz-a-ma-Tuzz.

Both cases show us invented vocabulary as a uniquely surprising and effective way of stimulating young readers’ imaginations and tickling their funny bones.  But is a big concept the only good way to include made-up words? Definitely not. Let’s look at a few smaller but still savvy ways to use invented vocabulary.


TWO: The Pithy Punchline

The best humorous poems often end with a pitch-perfect, witty last line. There’s something about the timing and rhythm of those last few words that catches us off guard and anchors the poem in our memory. Those endings can be a great place to use an invented word, where the word is an afterthought but the key to the laughter. Take this short poem by J. Patrick Lewis:

CLIPPER SHIP 

Cries a sheep to a ship on the Amazon
(A clipper sheep ship that her lamb is on)
"Remember, dear Willy,
the nights will be chilly,
so keep your white woolly pajamazon!" 

            © 1999 by J. Patrick Lewis, from The Bookworm’s Feast
            Used by permission of the author, who controls all rights.

Lewis could have used the standard English words "pajamas on" and still had a perfectly acceptable ending line. So he clearly didn’t make up a word to solve a rhyme problem. Instead, by playing off the opening line’s “Amazon” with a created portmanteau word, Lewis elevates the poem from cute to brilliant.

In another witty word tweak, Lewis gives us a whirlwind of fun with his “Her-i-cane.”

There was a curly her-i-cane,
Her name was Lorelei,
And all she ever wanted was
       To fly, fly, fly.

She wasn't like the other girls,
For Lori never grew
Into a proper her-i-cane
       That flew, flew, flew.

– Excerpt from "Her-i-cane" © 1999 by J. Patrick Lewis, The Bookworm’s Feast

The magic of this made-up word has nothing to do with rhyming at all. It's personification done in a charming, memorable way.  Again, Lewis could have used the ordinary word hurricane and the poem would have “worked.” But by tweaking the vocabulary just a little left of normal, Lewis gave the poem a whole new level of whimsy and fun.

THREE: Who are you calling funny looking?  

Playing with the way words look.

Sometimes the funny isn’t about how a word sounds, but how it looks.  Doubling up on the A’s makes Douglas Florian’s "The Aardvarks" a giggle-producing kid favorite:

THE AARDVARKS

Aardvarks aare odd.
Aardvarks aare staark.
Aardvarks look better
By faar in the daark.

            © 2000 by Douglas Florian, from mammalabilia  
            Used by permission of the author, who controls all rights.

In "The Lynx," another charming poem in his mammalabilia collection (Harcourt, 2000), Florian gets the laughs by spelling “stynx” to match lynx. Again, Florian had no need to make up a word so the poem would rhyme, instead he added to each poem’s surprise and wit by respelling words that worked in the first place – the same way Lewis played with Amazon and pajamazon.


FOUR: Do do do it again! 
Words that get funnier every time you say them.

Many of the examples above deal with invented words used just once for a pithy, syncopated “ba-doom-ching” laugh.  But funny can come in bigger doses too. Consider J. Patrick Lewis’s "A Hippopotamusn’t" that gets sillier and sillier as the poem goes on:

A hippopotamusn't sit
  On lawn chairs, stools, and rockers.
A hippopotamusn't yawn
  Directly under tightrope walkers.
A hippopotamusn't roll
  In gutters used by bowlers.
A hippopotamusn't fail
  To floss his hippopotamolars.

– Excerpt from the title poem of A Hippopotamusn't © 1990 by J. Patrick Lewis

Every time the hippopotamusn’t is mentioned, something new and outrageous delights the young readers.  The same way each new line of "The Bear" by Douglas Florian brings another chuckle:

THE BEAR

Come Septem-bear
I sleep, I slum-bear,
Till winter lum-bears
Into spring.
More than that's
Em-bear-rassing.

 © 2000 by Douglas Florian, from mammalabilia  
 Used by permission of the author, who controls all rights.

Both of these authors get their timing and the laughs, just right.  In each case the tweaked or invented words are intentionally planned, wisely used and never just to “make the rhyme work.”


FIVE: Ticklish tongue twisters
The delight of getting words wrong.

Sometimes an author purposefully misuses or misspells a word, and delight of readers of all ages.  We can all relate to the bungled words in Laura Richard’s tongue twisting "Eletelphony."

Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! No! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I’ve got it right.)

– Excerpt from "Eletelephony" by Laura E. Richards, read the rest HERE.

There are so many more excellent examples, I could keep adding from now till November. (Though I think Michelle might protest.)  What’s clear in each and every example is that the poet used invented words to elevate, entertain and strengthen their work, never in an attempt to fix a tricky couplet. They weren’t just throwing in the word “tweeple” to rhyme with people or matching purple with “burple.” Which, now that I come to think of it, could work if your poem was about drinking grape juice or swallowing grape bubble gum.  Maybe I need to write that poem. Or maybe you do. (grin)

Either way, on that note I will leave you with this bit of wit and inspiration about made up words from Kenn Nesbitt. See you next time on Rhyme Crime Investigations.

Today I Decided to Make Up a Word  

Today I decided to make up a word,
like flonk, or scrandana, or hankly, or smurred.
My word will be useful and sound really cool;
a word like chindango, or fraskle, or spewl.

My friends and my teachers will all be impressed
to learn that I’ve made up a word like extrest,
or crondic, or crambly, or squantion, or squank.
Whenever they use it, it’s me that they’ll thank.

They’ll call me a genius and give me a prize,
repeating my word, be it shimble, or glize,
or frustice, or frongry, or frastamazoo,
or pandaverandamalandamaloo.

You’ll see it on TV shows one of these days.
They’ll use it in movies. They’ll put it in plays.
They’ll shout it from rooftops! The headlines will read,
“This Kid Has Invented the Word that We Need!”

I’ll make up my word, and I’ll share it with you,
and you can tell people from here to Peru;
the old ones, the young ones, and those in between…
as soon as I figure out what it should mean.

             © 2009 by Kenn Nesbitt,  from My Hippo Has the Hiccups 
             Used by permission of the author, who controls all rights.
              
             Listen to the poem read aloud at Poetry4Kids.com.

Thanks, Carrie! 

Make sure to check out Carrie's previous Rhyme Crime posts on Today's Little Ditty:

• Igor Meter: Step One– PICK A BEAT   
• Nearly Nellie: Step Two– MAKE IT STICK
• Wrench-it Ralph: Step Two (continued)– Unwrench Your Rhyme 
• Singsong Sal: Step Three– CHANGE IT UP
• A Look at a Legend: Scanning the Seuss Man

Carrie L. Clickard is an internationally published author and poet.  Her first picture book, VICTRICIA MALICIA, debuted in 2012 from Flashlight Press. Forthcoming books include MAGIC FOR SALE (Holiday House, 2017), DUMPLING DREAMS (Simon and Schuster 2017) and THOMAS JEFFERSON & THE MAMMOTH HUNT (Simon and Schuster, 2018). Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals including Spider, Muse, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Havok, Myriad Lands, Clubhouse, Spellbound, Penumbra, Haiku of the Dead, Underneath the Juniper Tree, Inchoate Echoes, and The Brisling Tide.  

Kenn Nesbitt has challenged us to write poems for our mothers this month. Click HERE for more information, then post your poem on our October 2016 padlet. While I haven't featured any reader contributions yet, I did post two lines from author John Irving this week. Stay tuned for more.

Irene Latham is welcoming poets and poetry lovers to Poetry Friday roundup with a fun assortment of scarecrows! If you were a scarecrow, what would you wish for? Find out what Irene's scarecrow has to say at Live Your Poem.

Carrie Clickard: Scanning the Seuss Man

 

Carrie Clickard has encountered some of the most villainous versifiers in the line of duty.  

Today, in the spirit of political shenanigans and social unrest, she enlists the help of fuzzy ducks to make sense of it all. Well, not really ducks exactly...  Sneetches.

Whether or not you have stars upon thars, enjoy this latest installment from TLD's Rhyme Crime Investigator!


(Click on the wanted posters for Carrie's previous posts.)

A look at a legend:  Scanning the Seuss man

There are over sixty Dr. Seuss books in print today and over 100 million copies have been sold. His books are read around the world in more than twenty languages. Clearly he has a lot to teach any of us about how to craft successful rhyme. There are only a rare few out there in writer-land that might claim to do it better.

That doesn’t mean, however, that every Seussian work is absolutely flawless.  Let’s take a Rhyme Crime look at THE SNEETCHES by Dr. Seuss, our mentor text for today, and see how it holds up to scrutiny. (You'll find the video version HERE.)

First, a disclaimer: Before I set out, I must confess to being a lifelong fan-girl of the Seuss man. This may mean that during this critique I cut him more slack than I should.  Feel free to call me on it, or chime in with your own observations, if you think I’ve missed something useful. 

Let’s start with some basics.

WORD COUNT:  826 words, THE SNEETCHES might be considered a bit long in today’s market, but not intolerably so. Many editors now say the sweet spot for picture books is 500 words and under, but that’s not a hard and fast cutoff. Three of my four rhyming picture books have over 700 words.

RHYME SCHEME:  Rhyming couplets. A-A, B-B, C-C  etc. (with one or two exceptions).

METER:  Anapestic Tetrameter, aka Reverse Dactyl. Each line of the verse can be divided into four feet, each foot has three beats, with the stress/accent on the third beat:

          da da DAH, da da DAH, da da DAH, da da DAH. 

However be warned: the good doctor takes a few liberties with his meter along the way, and we’re going to talk about that first.

Ready to dive in? Here we go:

          Now, the STAR-belly SNEETCHes had BELLies with STARS.
          The PLAIN-belly SNEETCHes had NONE upon THARS.

Right here in the opening couplet Seuss sets us up for a slightly nonstandard rhythm.  The first line has 12 beats. The second line has 11. The first line is straight anaPEST, emphasis on every third syllable. But the second line skips the first beat.  Its first foot is iambic, then it falls back into anapestic for the next three feet.

Some people might read it aloud without an accent on SNEETCH in the second line at all:

          The PLAIN-belly sneetches had NONE upon THARS.

          da DAH da-da da-da, da DAH, da da DAH

So what is Seuss’ intent? It’s a little too early to tell.  Maybe this is a unique rhythm pattern that we can follow through the poem.  Let’s try the next couplet and see.

          Those STARS weren’t so BIG. They were REAL-ly so SMALL
          You might THINK such a THING wouldn’t MATter at ALL.

Hmmm.  This time we have a shorter line first, 11 beats, starting with that short iambic foot. And then we have a 12 beat line, straight anapest.  That makes the first two couplets mirror images of each other.

Maybe that’s a clue.  Seuss could be building four line stanzas with this pattern:

          anaPEST anaPEST anaPEST anaPEST      (12 beats)
          iAMB, anaPEST, anaPEST, anaPEST        (11 beats)
          iAMB, anaPEST, anaPEST, anaPEST        (11 beats)
          anaPEST anaPEST anaPEST anaPEST      (12 beats)

Interesting.  Let’s try another four lines.  I won’t mark them out. Let’s see if you read them the same way I do.

          But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches
          Would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches."
          With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort
          “We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”

It’s not quite a match, is it?  Line two does start out with a short two beat foot, but line three is straight anapest, and so is line four.  And did you catch the extra beat in both lines of the first couplet?

Clearly, Seuss is being a bit, ahem, flexible in his meter and structure. From our reading so far, it seems we need to let each couplet stand on its own. Okay. I’m game.  Of the next six couplets there are:

• two couplets with the “short” second line

• one with a short first line

• one that has both lines in perfect anapest

• and two couplets where BOTH lines start with the “short”  foot.

PHEW!  If that’s a pattern, it’s one for a crazy quilt.  So what in the world does all of this mind-boggling, syllable counting tell us?  Have we discovered a fatally flawed Dr. Seuss book?

No, no. I’m not about to sully the great Seuss’ honor. What we have here, in my opinion, is an excellent example of letting the verse serve the story, and NOT the other way around. Clearly Seuss is not following the precise form or sticking to rigid line length and meter.  And yes, he’s definitely bending a few rules.  But does it harm the story? Does it make the book bad to read aloud?

Not one bit.

Take a moment and read the rest of the way through the book as you would with a child, letting your narrative voice take over instead of your inner critic.  Notice how the change in rhythm often emphasizes a point in the plot. A tiny difference in line length breaks up the text just where the rhythm might become too repetitive. The liberties Seuss takes actually strengthen his storytelling.

This is a hard lesson to learn: knowing when it’s okay to bend the rules as rhymers.  Bend them too much, or too early in your career, and you may find your work labeled as “inconsistent” or “unpolished” by editors. Avoid bending them at all and you risk writing sing-song, snooze worthy verse.  

That’s not to say there aren’t a few areas where the Sneetches’ rhyme could have been the eensiest bit stronger. (I won’t say better. Nope. Not me.)  Let’s look at two quick examples.

One:

Seuss’ choice of using dialect for “thars” to rhyme with stars, yet not using any other southern or western pronunciations, feels a bit like cheating. It’s cute and it works within the story, but I’m not sure it would fly with many of today’s editors. If I was giving feedback to a crit buddy, I’d probably label this a prime example of using weasel words to get out of a tough rhyme situation.

Two: 

In the middle of the text Seuss uses one of his marvelous made up words:

          So they clambered inside. Then the big machine roared
          And it klonked. And it bonked. And it jerked. And it berked
          And it bopped them about. But the thing really worked!

“Berked.” It’s funny sounding and fun to read aloud, and more importantly it rhymes with “worked” and “jerked.” But where most of Seuss’ other word creations are hilarious onomatopoeia, wildly imagined creatures or fantastical inventions, this one seems made up solely to get him out of a tough rhyme spot. The same can be said for his couplet that reads:

"...I’ll make you, again, the best Sneetches on beaches
And all it will cost you is ten dollars eaches."

Eaches? Really? 

Because he’s Seuss, he can get away with it. I strongly suggest you don’t try it until you’ve published at least half as many books as he has. (wink)

Thanks once again for coming along on another Rhyme Crime investigation. I hope you found something useful to squirrel away in your writer’s tool cabinet.  And if you’re out there listening, dearest Doctor, forgive me my presumption. No one has inspired me more.

Go on now, write something amazing.

Thanks for another amazing and inspiring post, Carrie!

Carrie Clickard is an internationally published author and poet.  Her first picture book, VICTRICIA MALICIA, debuted in 2012 from Flashlight Press. Forthcoming books include MAGIC FOR SALE (Holiday House, 2017), DUMPLING DREAMS (Simon and Schuster 2017) and THOMAS JEFFERSON & THE MAMMOTH HUNT (Simon and Schuster, 2017). Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals including Spider, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Havok, Myriad Lands, Clubhouse, Spellbound, Penumbra, Haiku of the Dead, Underneath the Juniper Tree, Inchoate Echoes, and The Brisling Tide. 

In case you missed last week's spotlight interview with Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, she's challenged us to write poems about small things– animals or objects you see everyday and don't give much thought. Click HERE for more details.  Featured this week were poems by Jessica Bigi and Joy Acey, as well as a related quotation by Yoko Ono.

Thanks to Irene Latham for hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup at Live Your Poem.

Carrie Clickard: Step Three– CHANGE IT UP

Over the past year, we've met some rather unsavory characters in Carrie Clickard's Rhyme Crime Investigation series:

Igor Meter: Step One– PICK A BEAT  

Nearly Nellie: Step Two– MAKE IT STICK

Wrench-it Ralph: Step Two (continued)– Unwrench Your Rhyme 

 

Today Carrie's back to introduce us to our next villainous versifier.

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Change it up!

Shaking off the slippery snooze of Singsong Sal.

Trail weary from chasing down Rhyme Crime desperados and haulin’ em off to the hoosegow, you slip through the doors of the Tanglefoot Saloon. But before you can sidle up the bar and order a tall cool one, a flicker of something soft and slippery catches your eye.

Dagnabit.  It’s Singsong Sal, come to spoil your poetry.

Singsong Sal isn’t a hardened criminal, not like those other pesky polecats we’ve been arresting.  She doesn’t break the rules of rhyme but she’s trouble all the same. She can take your rhyme and turn it into such a monotonous misery that any editor worth her salt will run for the hills.

Time to change it up, quick!

If you’ve been following along with our Rhyme Crime articles, chances are you’re feeling pretty good about your rhyme right now.  You’ve got the meter solid as a rock, you haven’t let weasel words sneak in and there’s not a close rhyme in sight.  It’s clap along, tap along perfection.

And that might just be a little TOO perfect.

Remember those long epic poems you read in high school or college – that went on and on in the same unvarying cadence?

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O'er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset...

                                           Excerpt from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha"
                                           (Read the rest here.)

I’ll confess I never made it past three or four stanzas. My apologies to all those who were Hiawatha fans. It wasn’t what Longfellow was saying, I love Native American legends to this day.  It was how he was saying it, that droning tick tock sameness.  When a verse, even the best poetry, marches along in lockstep, never varying – it can fall from smooth right into …

That’s the last thing we want an editor to do.  So let’s take a look at a few cures if your verse has the Singsong Sal blues.


Give your verses a dancing partner: 

Try the “verse – chorus” two-step.

Ah, the magic of a repeated chorus – the part of the song we actually know all the words to, when everyone chimes in.  It can be as simple as a phrase or a couplet. It doesn’t even have to rhyme. (GASP!!)  What a chorus can’t be is the exact same line length and rhythm of your verses.

Here’s an example from the great Shel Silverstein, just in time for the Halloween season:

Down in Lou´siana where the black trees grow
Lives a voodoo lady named Marie Laveaux.
She’s got a black cat tooth and a mojo bone,
And anyone wouldn´t leave her alone.

She goes GREEEEEEEEEEEE...
Another man done gone.

She lives in a swamp in a hollow log
With a one-eyed snake and a three-legged dog.
She’s got a bent bony body and stringy hair,
And if she ever sees you messin´ around there,

She goes GREEEEEEEEEEEE...
Another man done gone.

                                                            Excerpt from "Marie Laveau"
                                                            Words & Music by Shel Silverstein & Baxter Taylor.
                                                            Copyright © 1972  /  Evil-Eye Music Inc, N.Y.

Shel uses just seven words and or six words and one shriek, and snap! He’s avoided the singsong repetition and he gets audience participation, whether they’re singing along (yes, you can find it on YouTube) or young readers are shouting it out.  The structure is basic and predictable, but in an entertaining, engaging way.

Sometimes it takes a bit more than just a phrase to keep the story flowing. Maybe you need a regular four or six line chorus. Don’t let that worry you. It’s the change in reading rhythm that matters.  And while you’re dancing those verses around, remember you’re not limited to the two step.


You can vary it to a cha-cha:  

Verse-verse-chorus. Verse-verse-chorus.  

Like this fun old gospel tune:

Down in the town where I was born
there was a haunted house
and all the folks that passed that way
would creep by, like a mouse.

Now Cap’n John who owned that house
had died some years before.
but neighbors claimed they’d seen him there
still standing in the door.

          That old house is ha’nted.
          Folks take it for granted.
          If you’re down
          in that part of town
          don’t you go near that house!
  
Soon every night the strangest sounds
would come from out that way.
Those ghosts would carry on all night
‘til roosters crowed for day.

Old Deacon Brown was bold and brave
at least that’s what he said.
He’d often claimed he’d liked to talk
and mingle with the dead.

          That old house is ha’nted.
          Folks take it for granted.
          If you’re down
          in that part of town
          don’t you go near that house!  

A prize was offered to the man
He might be black or white
Who’d stay there in the cap’n house
So folks could sleep at night

Deacon Brown was bold, he said,
And so he promised us
That he would stay out there a week
And stop that spectral fuss

                                              Excerpt from "That Ole House is Ha’nted" by Jester Hairston

It’s up to you how often you break up the verses, and how long the chorus lasts.  The choices are endless and there are no rules. Well, there is one rule, and Louis says it best:

Let your caboose loose.

Maybe you’re a rebel.  You need to spice up that rhyme, but anything as traditional as verse-chorus is NOT for you.  Great!  Break out of the mold and try something surprising.  How about a single line refrain that comes FIRST in each stanza?

I was a teenage creature.
I was a junior wolfman, at night there’s a werewolf moon.
Come and hold my hairy hand down at the black lagoon.

I was a teenage creature.
I’m covered with a lizard scale.
I’ve got to cut a hole in my jeans to wag my slimy tail.

I was a teenage creature
I was a teenage vampire, a rock and rolling ghoul.
Won’t you let a Dracula walk you home from school?

                                                                  Excerpt from "Teenage Creature" by Lord Luther              
                                                                  Music & Lyrics by Ric Masten, Don Stevens
                                                                  Les Cangas Music Publishing, 1958

It’s quirky, but it works. Maybe it works because it’s quirky – you be the judge.


Shake an extra leg: 

Change your verse to use nonstandard stanzas.

This solution takes a bit more work, but it can have some startlingly good results.  An unexpected stanza structure might seem a bit unbalanced at first, but that’s precisely the point.  It keeps your reader from falling into a samey-samey sleepwalk. Take a risk and shorten one line, lengthen one line or even add a line at the end to make a five line stanza.  See what it does for the offbeat flavor of this H.P. Lovecraft poem:

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
  And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
  And the harpies of upper air,
  That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread
  Never shone in the sunset's gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
  Where the rivers of madness stream
  Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

                                                        Excerpt from H.P. Lovecraft's "Hallowe’en in a Suburb"
                                                        (Read the rest here.) 

The odd structure adds to the weird feeling the poem evokes, in my opinion.  It might not be the right choice for a different topic, but that’s where your writer’s instinct comes in.

There are so many options and so little time to try them all.  I’m sorry to say there’s no short cut, the one easy-peasy recipe for this step.  You have to feel the rhythm of your story as a whole and tweak it in just the right spots.  Sometimes you’ll get your rhyme out on the dance floor and bust a move. Other times you’ll tweak something and bust a leg instead.  That’s why we call her slippery Singsong Sal.  Getting her to vamoose can feel like one step forward, two steps back.

It’s a little like a cha-cha – or a do-si-do – don’t you think? And on that note, I’ll leave you with a bit of Bugs Bunny square dance inspiration. Thanks for joining me on another Rhyme Crime Investigation. Now get out there and get your verses dancing!

Thanks, Carrie!

 (Just so long as I do-si-don't land myself in Rhyme Crime incarceration.)

Carrie Clickard is an internationally published author and poet whose career also spans graphic design, illustration and film.  Her first picture book, VICTRICIA MALICIA, debuted in 2012 from Flashlight Press.  Forthcoming books are MAGIC FOR SALE (Holiday House, 2016) and THOMAS JEFFERSON & THE MAMMOTH HUNT (Simon and Schuster, 2017).  Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals including Spider, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Clubhouse, Spellbound, Penumbra, Haiku of the Dead, Underneath the Juniper Tree, Inchoate Echoes, and The Brisling Tide.  

 

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In case you missed last week's spotlight interview with Marcus Ewert, he's challenged us to write love poems this month– about relationships that seem unrequited, but which end up being requited after all. Click HERE for more details.  Featured this week were poems by Janie Lazo, B.J. Lee, and my daughter Miranda.

Deputy Laura Purdie Salas is holding down the Poetry Friday fort at Writing the World for Kids.