THERE ONCE WAS A BLOGGER WHO WROTE....

To round off Poetry Week at the blog with something of an amuse-bouche, here are a few of my favourite limericks. Although usually a vehicle for reasonably crass, lowbrow humour of a sexual nature, this form can also yield surprisingly witty and intelligent examples, and there is something about the combination of rhyme and metre that produces a strong impact, even in the humblest of manifestations.

From, respectively: Anon; Wendy Cope (stanza III from her limerick version of 'The Wasteland') and Maurice E. Hare.

There once was a man from Peru,

Whose limericks stopped at line two.

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The Thames runs, bones rattle, rats creep;

Tiresias fancies a peep--

A typist is laid,

A record is played--

Wei la la. After this it gets deep.

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There was a young man who said "Damn!

I perceive with regret that I am

But a creature that moves

In predestinate grooves

I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram.

Please feel free to inundate me with your own limerick efforts as comments.

David