“Grandma, do you know what limericks are? I wrote one today. Do you want to hear it?” my 11-year-old grandson Toby asked after telling me about a guest poet’s visit to his fifth grade classroom. Of course, I wanted to hear it. Toby recited:

In the Sounds of the Night

In the sounds of the night
with the stars shining bright
a man waits under the moon
he’s looking for the gwish
a mythical fish
which is said to live in the lagoon.
He hears a small splash
and then a large crash
and he is sucked into a typhoon.

If you remember the definition of a limerick as a humorous, frequently bawdy, verse of three long and two short lines rhyming aabba, you might have responded as I did:

“That’s fun, Toby. Does your poem have a few more lines than a regular limerick?”

“It does. It’s a limerick and a half.”

“Did the poet like your new form?”

“He did.”

“Do you think you could write another one in that form?”

“Of course.”

Toby was quiet for only a short while before he told me he had another one in mind.”Let’s see. Oh, yeah, it goes like this:

Limericks and a Half

When Mr. Murray came to teach,
glasses askew and pink as a peach,
he helped us create good poetry.
He told us write
as much as we might
and to share it with freedom and glee.
Coming home after school,
with my new writing tool,
limerick and a halfs were invented by me!”

I was more than wowed! 

One of my favorite teachers at the University of Washington, the poet Nelson Bentley, insisted his students write at least one funny poem a month. He knew that we should exercise all the parts of our selves if we are to write well and if we are to preserve the element of play essential when we work with words, no matter how serious our subject.

It wasn’t long after that walk home with Toby that his mom, my daughter Emily, saw this variation of a limerick on Facebook:

A poet who lived in Iran
Wrote limericks that no one could scan.
When someone asked why,
She said with a sigh,
“I guess it’s because I always do my best to squeeze as many syllables
into the last line of each limerick as I possibly can.”

Here again, the playfulness of breaking the traditional pattern, in this case to prove the persona’s point, makes readers smile.

I asked my daughter who wrote the limerick. She contacted the Facebook friend who had posted it. He replied:

The source: I’m not sure, but I think something like it was in Martin Gardner’s ‘Mathematical Recreations’ column in Scientific American sometime in the winter or spring of 1976. However, I’m pretty sure he was just reporting some pre-existing popular lore. I recall that it was followed by two other self-referential “limericks.”

One of those is this one:

A poet who lived in Peru
Wrote limericks that stopped at line two.

He was remembering these since 1976! It’s clear that limericks and variations on the form stick because the words make us smile.

For most of us it may be easier to remember them than to write them. We received only three Writing It Real member (brave souls) responses to the request for limerick-like poems last month. The ones they sent us are fun, too, even if the writers were squeamish about their efforts. I have their permission to share them:

Having Fun with Past Frustrations
by Mary Ellen Talley

There was a woman who tended her mending
For socks, zippers, & ripped seams in tasks never ending
Her fingers they fumbled
In frustration she mumbled
The damnable time she was spending
She bent & she broke needles galore
Then bought matching thread at the fabric store.

Martini in a Wine Glass
by Joely Johnson Mork

A martini in a wine glass?
You might have had enough, lass.

True, it’s not easy to know when to stop,
particularly when you’re having such fun
(which only happens after a few more than one).

You’re finally down to that very last drop,

and the night’s gone all sideways and blurry.
You should get off to bed in a hurry…

Before getting online to drunk-shop!

Silly Limericks
by Grandma Carol Robins

1.

There once was a boy name of Hazen
Whose running was almost amazin’,
One day he ate meat and
He saw that his feet
Were so fast they looked like they were blazin’!

2.

I once knew a boy with two dogs
Who thought he’d chop trees into logs
Said his dad, “hold the line,
These trees are too fine”
Now the boy, dad and dogs go for jogs.

3.

In Bridgeport a boy went to school
The winters there were very cool.
He learned how to ski
In the snow but could see
That in summer he’d swim in a pool!

4.

There once was a boy who could jump
Three feet high over rocks and a stump
He jumped up so high
He was up to the sky but
His feet landed firm with a thump.

5.

When Hazen was once only three
His Mom said, “A thought comes to me:
When Hank was a pup and
Rue was not grown-up,
All of you were as cute as can be!”

6.

Hazen turned four, and then five.
In the swimming pool he learned to dive.
He soon read a book
By himself and he took
All his friends in the car for a drive!

I sent them to Toby, who enjoyed reading the poems inspired by his enthusiasm for limericks and their variations. When he read Carol’s poem, he had a suggestion for making the sixth verse a limerick and a half:

Hazen is now five
He has learned how to dive
And already he thinks like a teen.
Off the shelf he took
And read a book.
When he is 16
Maybe Hazen will say, “I’ve
already learned to drive”
But wake up because it’s a dream.

Talking to one another in patterns of rhythm and rhyme is certainly an exercise for the brain. It is also a convenient venue for humor. Our three entrants plus Toby will all receive a book of poetry in exchange for the work they sent to help make this article come to fruition. I thank them all for allowing us to see what happened when they put their mind to following a pattern and indulging in rhymes that are silly.

Here is a site called Shadow Poetry, which is full of created poetry forms that I think you will enjoy reading and perhaps emulating. When you get to the site, browse the list of poetic forms along the left-hand side of the page. When one of them engages your interest, say the “blitz poem“, the “compound-word poem,” or “clarity pyramid” (my favorites), read the description of the form and the examples posted below the description. The forms and the poems are impressive.

If you become inspired to write in one of the forms, you can submit your work to this website for consideration for posting. From the site’s FAQ:

Q: I have a poem that I’d like to add as an example to one of the featured poetry forms. How do I add it to the web site?

A: If you have an accurate example of a poetry type featured on the Shadow Poetry web site and would like to see it displayed, please submit the poem through our contact us page along with your contact information. We will review it to see if it is a good fit for our site.

Toby, this next part is for you (and, of course, all readers who become enthused and invent a form):

Q: I have invented a poetry form. Will you display it on Shadow Poetry?

A: If you have invented a poetry form and would like to see it displayed on the Shadow Poetry web site, please submit the form with a detailed definition and several examples to us through our contact us page. We will review the form to see if it is a good fit for our site.

Thank you, Toby, Mary Ellen, Joely, Carol and Shadow Poetry for a very good time.