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Clerihews and Balliol Verses

sackett

Barely Tolerated Lampooneer
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Are these old forms of light verse still practiced?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew#Form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balliol_rhyme

The Clerihew is supposed to have an AABB rhyme scheme, which right there puts it out of my poor league. Here’s a sample:

Sir James Dewar
Is a better man than you are
None of you asses
Can liquify gases.

And of course,

First come I. My name is Jowett.
There's no knowledge but I know it.
I am Master of this College,
What I don't know isn't knowledge.


Balliol rhymes are more forgiving:

I'm John Wilson Croker,
I do as I please;
Instead of an Ice House
I give you - a frieze!

This is obscure; Croker was an architect. I think maybe the Wiki contributor was getting tired.

Anyhoo: I feel that Clerihews or something like them deserve to live. Does anybody here agree?

I’m currently reading H. W. Brands’s Masters of Enterprise, about various rich and frequently ruthless characters from the history of American capitalism. Starting from that and armed with a dirty mind (like the rest of you) I’ve made up

I’m J. P. Morgan!
Think my nose is big?
You should see my portfolio!

And

I’m H. L. Hunt!
I says H. L. Hunt!
I’ll drill anything
That promises to come up oil.

A pretty undemanding genre, as you can see. Got anything to contribute?
 
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sackett said:
Are these old forms of light verse still practiced?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew#Form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balliol_rhyme



Balliol rhymes are more forgiving:

I'm John Wilson Croker,
I do as I please;
Instead of an Ice House
I give you - a frieze!

This is obscure; Croker was an architect. I think maybe the Wiki contributor was getting tired.
Click to expand...


I love Clerihews but I'd never heard of Balliol rhymes.

I just want to say that I know of this John Wilson Croker and he deserved everything he got. He was a very conservative politician and a viciously cruel literary critic. Byron and Shelley held that it was Croker's review of Keats's "Endymion" that 'snuffed out' the life of the young poet. Satisfyingly, Croker's own masterwork, an edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson", was the subject of a deliciously nasty review by Lord Macaulay - one I have seen described as "the best bad review every written".



According to Wikipedia the 'ice-house' jibe is a reference to Croker's being as high-handed with the allocation of funds that had been raised by members of the Athenaeum club as he had been with Boswell's text. Instead of using them to build the proposed ice-house, he spent them on a copy of a bit of the Parthenon frieze.


Possibly more than anyone needed to know?



I'll just quote the original Clerihew, as composed by the fellow schoolboy and best friend of G.K.Chesterton - Edmund Clerihew Bentley:

Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

Chesterton and Bentley played around with this verse form but It's got too many rules to be easy, though when Clerihews come off, the rigidity of the form makes them funnier.

I hope somebody else will add a few Balliol rhymes to yours. Or even better, clerihews.
 
bruto said:
Alas, to be both smart and terse
Is very difficult in verse.
Click to expand...

Very neatly expressed.

Once, when asked for a Clerihew OR a haiku, I managed to produce four lines that could be read as both. I had to treat the subject's name as the first line of the Clerihew and as a title for the haiku. It is not an experience I would care to repeat.
 
James Randi
Derides the modus operandi
Of certain buffoons
Who like to bend spoons.
 
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