O2BIrish’s Course in Limerick Writing 101

I have seen many tries in the Shark Tank of submitters penning (kind of an antiquated term nowadays, maybe I should say “keying”) limericks, with varying degrees of success. Many seem to believe that if you make the verse five lines long, make the first, second and fifth line rhyme with each other (sort of) and make the third and fourth rhyme amongst themselves and a little bit shorter, you have a limerick. I am afraid there is a little more to it than that.

There is one part of the equation that is usually being left out – that of meter. A requirement of good poetry is that a fairly strict pattern of (a) syllable count and (b) syllable emphasis is followed.

Limerick Meter

There was a discussion on November 6^th in the Tank about the meter of the limerick, with “data guy” telling us that the line structure of the form is two lines of anapestic trimeter, two lines of anapestic bimeter, and the last of anapestic trimeter. What does that mean?

The anapestic is a type of “foot” in poetry that consists of two weak syllables followed by a strong one.  The trimeter means that there are three feet in the line. Similarly, the bimeter means there are two feet in the line. When I write my limericks, I have a tendency to use this quite strictly. You may have weaker syllables at the end of the line to set up and complete the rhyme of the limerick. There are many famous limericks that omit the first weak syllable, and many times add weak syllables at the end of the line. For example:

(From here on, I will use “x” to denote weak syllables, “/” for strong ones.)

This makes it very important to consider which words you use in the limerick, and where they are put within the line. This is why poets will move words around, taking “poetic license”, in order to get a particular word or phrase to fit the meter of the poem.

Let’s go way back in Tank history and look at the very first limerick I wrote – October 15, 2008.

Said the pilot fish, scratching his noggin,
"Why'd you bother me while I was joggin'?
You've got techies in suits
Standing by to reboot -
I just want you to reset my login!"

When we diagram the lines out, we get this:

Anapestic trimeter

Anapestic trimeter

Anapestic bimeter

Anapestic bimeter

Anapestic trimeter

This is one major key to what really makes a successful limerick: strict adherence to the meter. As an example of what I go through when I write, I'd like to look at December 5 -

Once, I stirred up potential disaster
By assisting a IS tech Master.
Can’t his taskbar be found?
Now he’s making it sound
Like he spent all his college years plastered.

When I was in draft mode, the third line was:

His taskbar can't be found.

I did not really care for this, since in the normal mode of pronunciation, the strong syllable in the word taskbar is the first: task. This either put the emphasis on the second syllable of the line to keep in synch with the normal pronunciation of the word, or put an unnatural emphasis on the bar part of the word to keep the correct rhythm of the meter. By making it a question and moving the word "can't" to the first syllable, the strong syllables were now in the correct places:

Can't his taskbar be found?

I have found that I prefer to not add a weak syllable at the end of the the bimeter lines, because the natural rhythm will cause you to have to steal the first weak syllables from the fourth and fifth lines to get it to sound right. If you are writing in the “Nantucket” style with all lines missing the first weak syllable, then the next line syllable stealing is not an issue. November 13, 2008 was an example of a limerick with the added weak syllable at the end of the bimeter lines and the first weak syllables removed from lines 4 and 5 (strong syllables are in bold and underlined):

When the help desk was called by the user,
There was something that seemed to confuse her.
Her laptop’s not needed,
Her wishes were heeded,
But now her screen’s only a snoozer.

(Yes, I did omit the first weak syllable in line 3 as well. I could have put a word in like "Though" and it still would have worked. However, this way both lines are consistent.)

Rhyme Scheme

The second part of the limerick is the rhyme scheme. As stated above, the last syllables of lines 1, 2 and 5 rhyme with each other, and the last syllables of lines 3 and 4 rhyme with each other. Sometimes limericks are famous for making words up to get the rhyme scheme to work, and for changing spellings. For example:

There once was a man from Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

But his daughter, named Nan

Ran away with a man

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

I have used this method a few times – most notably on December 4, 2008 with the invention of my famous words “cably” and “mably:”

Though I run my department quite ably,
A new system was bought that’s quite cably.
They went over my head.
The install made me dread.
Could it be reconfigured? Well, mably.

This uses two techniques - the first being a word made up to convey a meaning (cably - which as everyone should get from the story and the context, having many cables) The second being the mangling of a word where the meaning is still clear, but is altered to fit the rhyme scheme. In the same way that you can figure out the the second Nantucket means "Nan took it," we all should figure out that mably is used to mean "maybe." Those of you who are fans of humorist/songwriter/mathematician Tom Lehrer know that he used both of these techniques in the lyrics of several of his songs. That's one of the fun parts of writing limericks. If you can add that dimension, you've gone to a higher level of limerick writing. It doesn't always happen, but it's great when it does.

It is best to set up the created words by putting a correctly spelled and correctly used word in the first line (and the second if only one created word is needed). I don’t think “cably” and “mably” would have gone over as well if I used in the first line instead of the last line where you knew the context, rhyme scheme and meter.

The Anti-Limerick

There are times when the limerick breaks the rhythm and rhyme scheme to be a part of the humor or the poem. A famous example:

There was a young man from Japan

Whose limericks never would scan.

When asked why this was,

He answered "because

I always try to fit as many syllables into the last line as ever possibly I can."

This one breaks the rhythm rule by being considerably over the Anapestic trimeter. (You DO remember what an Anapestic trimeter is, don't you?)

Breaking the rhyme pattern has been used through the years for this comic effect. One of the first memories of this for me is from listening to the Dr. Demento radio show, when the #1 song always seemed to be "Shaving Cream" by Benny Bell. An example of a verse and the chorus:

I have a sad story to tell you.

It may hurt your feelings a bit. 

Last night when I walked into my bathroom

I stepped in a big pile of

    Shaving cream, be nice and clean .

    Shave everyday and you'll always look keen.

I have been known on a rare occasion to break both the rhyme and rhythm patterns for effect. This is something that I don't do very often, which really helps to set up the unexpected twists when I do. I set up the rhyme and meter properly in the first two lines, the punch line in the third, fourth and the first part of the fifth, and then take the poem in a slightly different direction at the end. My examples to date:

November 13, 2008

A new upgrade caused woe to the masses.
It caused web sites to run like molasses.
Many blades have all died,
And controllers are fried,
But the vendor did cover its tracks.

This one was my first attempt in the Tank of this type of writing - changing the last word for comic effect from what would normally be expected by the rhyme scheme. One would feel that the final line would really be something like:

But the vendors did cover their asses.

However I changed it to "But the vendor did cover its tracks." to throw the reader off. Little did I know about the influence of J. R. R. Tolkien. Some readers lapsed into what is called "Gollum-speak," and pronounced tracks as "trackses." Believe me, this is not what I had originally intended. I also had several readers submit their own final lines, all to make the poem fit the usual AABBA rhyme scheme.

December 9, 2008

I wrote this one knowing about Gollum-speak, and made sure there was absolutely NO WAY for Tolkien to figure into the reading of the poem:

The director’s request wasn’t pretty:
“Can we use this without your committee?”
“Should we not be addressing
A TRC blessing?”
The answer I got was quite unacceptable.

I had hoped in writing this that the rhyme scheme, meter and context of the poem would point to the word (cover your eyes, those of you with weak stomachs...) "shitty." (You may uncover them now...) I took this opportunity to change that word to "unacceptable", breaking both rhythm and rhyme patterns while still keeping the intended meaning for comic effect. 

As a final example, a quick, slightly lewd one to also illustrate this twist:

Once a boy who's from South Carolina

Was seen dating a girl from Regina.

When she asked from her heart,

"What's your favorite part

Of my body?" He said, "Your beautiful smile."

Hope this helps those interested in writing limericks. There will be a test on this chapter next Tuesday…

Reference for poetry meters: http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/meter.html

History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_(poetry)

Shaving Cream Lyrics: http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/shavingc.htm