Clerihews, you make some.

Cafe Society
1

Salt, A World History is not as boring a book as it may sound. It’s full of salty little tidbits, like this passage:

Edmund Clerihew Bentley, a British author of crime novels who lived from 1875 to 1956, wrote these lines, it is said, while in a chemistry class:

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

This was the first verse type known as a clerihew. . .*

A clerihew is a biographical 4 line verse, the first verse being the name of the subject. It’s rhymed AABB, it’s meter can be as screwed up as you like. I have made 3 memorial clerihews and one just because.

Micheal Jackson
Sound the claxon!
His million fans wept
And with boys he slept
Billy Mays
Who wasn’t Willie Mays
Lived the entrepreneurial dream
by selling lotsa Oxy-Clean
Farrah Fawcett
Had a six million dollar man, then lost it
Got the stepmom deal
With Tatum O’Neal

Sarah Palin
5 kids trailing
So foxy to the conservative and staid
that in her honor, porno is made

P.S. I wasn’t sure if this should go here or The Game Room. I chose here because it’s about a book and poetry. Stupid poetry but poetry just the same.

2

Ogden Nash
Wrote anything but trash.
Folks trying to copy his verse
Have done a lot worse.

I dunno, just seemed appropriate somehow…

3

Ogden was copying Bentley, to be sure.

4

'S what I figured.

5

Will try to come up with something newer/more current, but for now this is one I wrote a couple of years ago:

Relaxing is the hour
I spend with Schopenhauer
On my next vacation
I’ll bring The World as Will and Representation

6

Yabbut, technically that’s not a clerihew. The first line has to the the name of the subject person, and only that name.

I don’t have time to write one right now (though I love doing so!), so I’ll contribute one of my favorites written by someone else:

Mozart
Could never resist a tart.
In the ordinary way
He ate seven or eight a day.

7

I’ll try to dream one up but, like Scarlett, I have a favourite.

Sir Christopher Wren
said “I’m going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls,
Say I’m designing St. Paul’s.”

8

People aren’t exactly queueing up to post so I’ll stick my head above the parapet with this:

Captain James Tiberius Kirk
Was two days overdue at The Enterprise (his place of work),
His excuse for being late
Was a miscalculation of the stardate.

9

Barack Obama
Not the type to say “yo mama”
He’s way more well-spoken
His only vice is smokin’.
Sorry, I’ve always completely sucked at these.

10

On the occasion of Christopher Lee’s recent knighthood: this.

11

I’ve seen better rhymes, but not in this thread :slight_smile:

12

Vladimir Putin,
like Issac Newton,
uses gravitation
to ensure his station.

13

Ludovic
posts a nitpick.
Has seen better rhymes.
Has heard better mimes?

14

James Tiberius Kirk
Was an obnoxious jerk
A fat tub of lard
Not as good as Picard.

15

Oooh! A clerihew throw down! BTW, who names their kid Clerihew?

16

Oh Bravo!

17

Rafael Nadal
Can really hit the ball
He plays left-handed
And head-banded
he’s so cute

18

Jesus H. Christ
Had genes that were spliced.
It’s quite obvious where the origins of his X chromosome lie
But no one knows, Y.

19

Incorrect. Bentley himself observed no such restriction.

Julius Caesar
Always carried a tweezer
The way that he’d preen
You’d think him a queen.
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Had more than enough to retire on.
His army jaunt bespeaks
A love for Greek and Greeks.
Joyce’s Ulysses
Is strictly for sissies;
A mere piece of cake
After Finnegans Wake.

20

Bubbles
Knew all Michael’s troubles.
One day when Michael made him mad, to withhold his love,
He hid Michael’s other glove.