Back when I was in the newspaper biz—I mean really in the newspaper biz—there wasn’t anything that would cause a would-be contributor to be more roundly laughed at than a submission of poetry. The editor would pass it around for all in the newsroom to “appreciate,” and, accompanied by a murmur of snickers, the hapless attempt would be dropped from ceremonious height into the round file. Newspaper editors hate poetry. They regard it as a waste of font. Now, as a syndicated newspaper cartoonist, I surreptitiously sneak poetry into newspapers with regularity. Reporters, you see, have a rebellious nature. I probably should not include Limericks, though. Every good newspaper person knows a few good Limericks. I can’t repeat them here.
16 responses to “Sheer Poetry”
Come on Jimmy! This is the internet. If you can’t repeat it here, where can you repeat it?
I second dave’s motion! But don’t waste the ones you want to put into the strip.
It’s the internet, no need to repeat when a link will do the job.
There once was a ……..
man from Nantucket …
but as for the bucket
There once was a farmer from Leeds,
Who swallowed a packet of seeds.
It soon came to pass,
He was covered with grass,
But has all the tomatoes he needs.
Two eggs at Chesapeake osprey nest. No limerick springs to mind.
https://explore.org/livecams/birds/osprey-cam-chesapeake-conservancy
Peace,
Lots of Jimmy’s poetry is in limerick form—I wonder why. His post here had me look up that is it named after the city of Limerick. I could not have told that.
Some cartoonists use haiku. I prefer limericks!
Haiku seems a little harder: the five-seven-five syllable structure, the serious focus on nature. Limericks are lighter—and the anapests fit English so well.
Lovely Piazolla clarinet piece you gave us the URL to in the previous post!
Here’s a prank that fooled people into calling the cops:
https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46321349&nid=711&title=police-praise-wisconsin-students-for-prank-that-was-illusion
The cops loved it!
And here’s dramatic footage of the fleeing car wrecking (cops had called off the chase long before), overturning a semi’s trailer, and the perps being arrested:
https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46321619&nid=148&title=dashcam-video-shows-fleeing-car-crash-into-semitrailer-4-people-arrested
I feel very sorry for the trucker who was minding his own business.
I could not find the originator of this classic description of [problematic] limericks:
“The lim’rick packs laughs anatomical
Into space which is most economical
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.”
If you google it, you will find a lot of names associated with this doggerel.
“The limerick form is complex,
It’s topics speak mostly ’bout sex.
It burgeons with virgins,
And masculine urgin’s,
And sundry erotic effecx.”
These poems that we all call limericks
Are seldom much more than just gimmricks.
With serious thought
They seldom are fraught.
But Jimmy’s are always good whim tricks.