- Sir Humphry Davy
- Was not fond of gravy.
- He lived in the odium
- Of having discovered sodium.
Few people can claim to have invented a successful poetic form while trying to avoid schoolwork as a teenager, but Edmund Clerihew Bentley -- a popular English novelist and humorist of the early 20th century -- did just that while sitting in a science class at the age of 16 (1891):
- George the Third
- Ought never to have occurred.
- One can only wonder
- At so grotesque a blunder.
The name of this poetic form, the clerihew, is derived from Bentley's middle name. The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary defines the form as a humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain, rhymed as two couplets, with line of uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose. The modern example below is cited by author Richard Rhodes in his book Dark Sun:
- Sir James Dewar
- Is smarter than you are
- None of you asses
- Can liquify gases.
A more down-to-earth definition is given by Billy Mills in a recent article:
...these poems are biographical, focusing on a specific detail of a well-known person so as to poke gentle fun at them. There are four lines of no set length, although the first two are usually short and the second two long.
The first line is usually wholly or partly made up of the subject's name. These lines rhyme AABB, with portmanteau words and other linguistic innovations encouraged to achieve the rhymes. Although the results are (or at least meant to be) funny, Clerihews are rarely satirical and never abusive. Behind the wit, you can generally sense great admiration for the subject. If anything, most Clerihews are best seen as ironic eulogies....
Gilbert Chesterton was a fellow student of Bentley's, and Chesterton did much to help Bentley popularize the form. The two friends penned a couple of books that were especially influential in popularizing clerihews. Their first book, Biography for Beginners, was published in 1905. More Biography for Beginnners followed in 1929:
Baseless Biography, illustrated by Bentley's son, was published in 1939:
An omnibus volume (below left), combining all three books, appeared in 1951, five years before Bentley's death. The omnibus volume below right appeared in 1982. (The most recent omnibus volume that we could locate was an ebook publication in 2009.)
Many authors since Bentley have been enamored of the form:
For some reason, clerihews seem to be particularly popular with philosophers, witness this example from Dean W. Zimmerman:
G. E. Moore
was a bit of a bore;
more an old fossil
than a Cambridge Apostle.
With its focus on brevity and celebrity, the clerihew would appear to be the perfect poetic form for the Twitter generation....
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