Rats--found out too late that The Boston Globe is running a clerihew contest (finalists to be chosen tonight, 7/7, then voted on until July 10). Submissions are in the comments and are fun to read through. Some of my favorite entries (I'm disqualifying ones in which the first line consists of anything more than the subject’s name—it’s not a strict rule of the form, I guess, but I’m a hardass like that):
By “A. Nan”:
Jorie Graham
once said, "I am,
I think. Or not.
At least I'm hot!"
Frank Bidart
bent over Art,
called the friction
stuff of fiction.
By “therblig”:
Tim Berners-Lee
Invented HTTP
Thus the world wide web was born
For Nigerian Diplomats and porn
Georg Simon Ohm
Studied physics in his Bavarian home
But after much resistance, he just couldn't fight it
And wrote "Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet "
By “Danielle”:
Joe Orton
Was never too shy to go courtin'.
He spent some time in the slammer
Then got bludgeoned with a hammer.
[Think I'd vote for the Jorie--or Georg Simon Ohm]
Here are the only clerihews I’ve ever written, for a great class with Peter Klappert in '97:
Elizabeth Bishop
buttered the fish up
with homage and versification--
and herbed garlic, post-publication.
Marianne Moore
kept a voluminous store
of quotes that she dug in
case she needed something to plug in.
No comments:
Post a Comment