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Clerihews

Jack “Legs” Diamond and Peaches O’Toole. Chicago, 1929.

There’s nothing like a good dare. Jack Foley wrote:

Can Clara use
Clerihews

Or is their augury
Pettifoggery?

According to Jack, “The clerihew was invented in 1890 by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who was a schoolboy of sixteen at St. Paul’s in London when the divine numen of Orpheus struck him.

 Francis Stillman’s The Poet’s Manual and Rhyming Dictionary (1965) says this: ‘The clerihew is a humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain rhymed as two couplets, with lines of uneven length, and often contains or implies a moral reflection of some kind. The name of the individual who is the subject of the quatrain usually supplies the first line.'”
So, here are a few to humor my friends:

S.P.Mackin
his lips are smack’in

He feeds on books
It’s the library that he cooks

*

Stephanie Manning
gets a lot of tanning

Berkeley to Davis she goes by rail
observes shell mounds along the trail

*

Dore Stein is a blast
he can run very fast

He’s a damn good pitcher
but it won’t make him richer

*

When Julia Hsu makes a moue
birds would fluster and begin to coo

she is someone’s yum-yum
and my sweet chrysanthemum

*

Everyone knows Daniel Brady
who is animated like O’Grady

Life of the party is he
Jokes and silliness are key

*

Wendy Wolters is a rare find
She is very kind

Writes poetry and sings and dances
melts you with her glances

*

Pity Jack “legs” not Diamond, but Foley
in a gangster hat, oh holy moly

He writes clerihews for all his buddies
except for those who are fuddy-duddies

*

Invite Jeanne Lupton to tea
Lipton wont’ do it, says she

Two pink flowers grow out of her hair
Surely they’re sharper than the ears of a hare

 

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6 thoughts on “Clerihews”

  1. Pity Foley, who has the blues
    writing all these clerihews

    they seem like bottom of the tank verse:
    will he ever get back to blank verse!

  2. My wonderful Clara Hsu
    We, your friends, all love you,

    For you are keeper of the inn,
    The Poetry Hotel, our dearest tradition.

  3. Clara, I love your marvelous crew
    of playful curlicues

    especially smiled over the lines
    for Jack and Jeanne, but all are pretty darn fine!

  4. Hey there Ms. Hsu
    I think I give up the clerihew

    To terse
    To be anything other than doggerel verse

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