Writing As Recreation: Clerihews (2015-01-31)
I agree with the maxim that a change is as good as a rest. And just as doing visual art serves as a rest from my current writing project, so does less directed and goal-driven writing. That is why scribbling in this blog can be a respite from my more focused writing.
Another kind of writing as playful recreation is toying with different literary structures. Making up limericks is but one example. Another short poetic form that is fun to write is the clerihew: a comical verse form of four lines invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. Clerihews are biographical, and the first line ends with the name of a notable person. The prosody is simple. The rhyme scheme is AABB, and the more forced the rhymes, the better. The meter is irregular, and the more clumsy the rhythm, the better.
Here are three of Bentley’s...
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
George the Third
Ought never to have occurred.
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.
John
Stuart Mill,
By a
mighty effort of will,
Overcame
his natural bonhomie
And
wrote Principles of Political Economy.
