Poetry Friday: Limicks by Ogden Nash

First, that is not a typo. Nash titled these little things Limicks and without finding any hard documentation I believe these were his invention, an abbreviation of a short-form Limerick: short one line, each line short three syllables of a traditional Limerick. I read once (or did I dream it) that some have confused the Limick with a Clerihew but (nerd alert) The Limick's rhyme structure is AABA and the Clerihew if AABB. There are some other differences, but do they really matter?

Nash was one of those mid-century writers of humorous verse who seems to have fallen out of fashion lately. The only people who I hear ask about his books are grandparents and great-grandparents and they think it's a shame his poems aren't widely available. I partly agree because while he did write short ditties that could hold their own against Lear and Florian there is also his much longer poetry which, quite frankly, bores; the observations aren't as fresh as they might have seemed in the 30's and 40's and, on the whole, has the feel of work that was composed and paid for by the word.

That said, I do prize my separating-at-the-spine, acid brown pocket book edition from 1959 that is the 30th anniversary reprinting, and with it the (re)discovery of a poetic form perhaps not practiced anywhere else since. Ladies and gentlemen, good people all, I now present

Limicks
by Ogden Nash

An old person of Troy
Is so prudish and coy
That it doesn't know yet
If it's a girl or a boy.

Two nudists of Dover,
Being purple all over,
Were munched by a cow
When mistaken for clover.

What? Huh? Only two? Wait, this isn't the book I thought it was (curses!) and it's only selections from that earlier volume! Grrrr. I know there are at least three or four more. Well, now what am I going to do?

A poet named Nash
Scribbled lines in a flash,
Though the limicks he wrote
Didn't raise any cash.

Just tossed that one off. Doesn't seem too hard. Let's see what y'all got out there. Anyone game for adding your own limicks in the comments?

Sara's hosting Poetry Friday this week over at Read Write Believe. Check it out!

The Cat on the Mat is Flat

by Andy Griffiths
illustrations by Terry Denton
Feiwel and Friends 2007
(Pan Macmillan, AU 2006)

"From the author of The Day My Butt Went Psycho!"

This book is just screaming for that kind of attention.

Take one part Dr. Seuss, one part Edward Lear, place in a blender with a dash of Dav Pilkey and a bit of Cartoon Network juice, pulse until the blender begins to smoke and then breathe the fumes deeply until you get a little dizzy... and then you, too, can author a book like this.

I like this book. I was once a boy. Some things just don't leave you no matter how old you get, like anarchic juvenile nonsense humor. It's got pigs on rocket-powered logs. It's got boys who repeatedly roll down a hill until they are sick and dizzy and landing smelly swill. It's got glue-dispensing kangaroos. It's got yaks. I rest my case.

No! It's also got those beginning reader rhyme patterns that Seuss made famous half a century ago. It's meant for tweens but reads like a baby book and that's a good part of it's humor; it lets an accomplished reader take stock of where they were as readers not so long ago and allows them to enjoy the satire. It is not sophisticated by any means, but instead is meant to be read as pure joy. It's a piece of candy eaten in secret between meals.

Here's are summaries of two chapters, taken from Andy Griffith's website:

Ed and Ted and Ted’s Dog Fred
In which Fred and Ted and Ted’s dog Fred do quite a lot of things that rhyme with ‘ed’.

Duck in a Truck in the Muck
In which Chuck the Duck gets his ice-cream truck stuck in muck and Buck the Duck attempts to help him get it unstuck with the aid of the muck sucker upper on his muck-sucking truck.

Yup, it's all like that.

Since the Australian cover contains a panel carton of a cat getting whacked by a rat with a bat I'm guessing the American version will be somewhat more tame -- can't be selling that sort of violence to children up front. Too bad, because I think you'd really galvanize armies of boys who would jump at this. What am I saying is, one smart pup is going to ferret this book out at the library and word-of-mouth is going to have the entire sixth grade reading this book in the same weekend across the country. One Friday they're all be yawning over the ancient hoopla over Pottermaina and the following Monday they'll all be quoting entire sections of the book to one another the way kids did after watching Monty Python or the original Saturday Night Live.

Or not.

Probably a good idea to check it out anyway, just in case.

Update: In a bit of syncronicity rarely seen here at the excelsior file, Fuse #8 has featured Andy Griffiths on her blog today!

The Akond of Swat

Oh, man! Proof that the Internets are a deadly place!

So I was toolin' around and found this post by Brooke over at The Brookeshelf. Some guy animates an Edward Lear poem. I'm totally digging it, remembering how Lear opened up the whole world of poetry to me when I was in fourth grade.

And then it hits me: Could these wonderful Internets also contain even more Edward Lear? Not just, but more: They contain an Edward Lear poem recited by Ken Nordine. To wit.

Ken Nordine was a 50's jazz poet, a voiceover artist, a man whose voice you hear and never forget. The first time I heard it was when I was young and he was doing ads for Levi's. He's done stuff with Jerry Garcia and put out a number of Word Jazz disks in his time. In the annals of spoken word, he's a great.

Then I'm checking out the comments on his video on YouTube and there's all this stuff about people not digging his politics. Ken defends himself by saying they're Lear's politics but what I'm seeing is people object to Nordine suggesting that Lear's poem did not apply equally to the political leaders shown in the video.

Reading the poem straight it is difficult to make out if Lear is just riffing on the possibilities of what a charismatic and war-like leader the Akhund was (according to one citation I found) or if he was merely using the unique sound of the title as a way of taking charge against the behavior of despotic leaders in general. I'm no Lear scholar, it's difficult to say, but I'm guessing the latter.

I also find it curious is that this poem, "The Akond of Swat," is included in the Edward Lear volume of Poetry for Young People series put out by Sterling, edited by Edward Mendelson. Here's their introduction:

"The poem never tells us who the Akond of Swat might be, but there really was a person with that title; he was a religious leader in what is now Pakistan, and Lear read about him while planning a trip to India."

All very well and good, but I suspect there's more to this story.

As for Mr. Nordine's politics, all I can say is if the images offend then close your eyes and listen. The man has a great voice.