A Clerihew (or clerihew) is a very specific kind of
humorous verse,
typically with the following properties:
The first line consists solely (or almost solely) of a well-known
person's name
The verse is humorous and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an
unusual point of view; but it is hardly ever satirical, abusive or obscene
It has four lines of irregular length
The rhyme structure is AABB
The metre and rhyme are often strained for humorous effect (like Ogden Nash's
poems).
The form was invented by and is named after
Edmund Clerihew Bentley.
Examples
The first ever Clerihew:
Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered
sodium.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Worked swiftly if not gently,
Tracking murderers down by a hidden clew
In whodunit and clerihew.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Mused, when he ought to have studied intently;
It was this muse
That inspired clerihews.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley
was evidently
a man
who could not get his verses to scan
Sir Karl
Popper
Perpetrated a whopper
When he boasted to the world that he and he alone
Had toppled
Rudolf Carnap from his
Vienna Circle
throne.
(by Armand T. Ringer)
Sir
Christopher Wren
Said, "I am going to dine with some men.:
If anyone calls,
Say I am designing
St Paul's."
John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote 'Principles of Political Economy'.
Daniel Defoe
Lived a long time ago
He had nothing to do so
He wrote Robinson Crusoe
Johann Sebastian Bach
was fond of saying, "Ach!"
And instead of saying "Guten Morgen"
He played the Toccata and Fugue on the organ!
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Lived upon venison;
Not cheap, I fear,
Because venison's dear.
(credited to
Louis
Untermeyer)
George the Third
Ought never to have occured.
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.
Clerihews are occasionally not about a particular person, as in this example
by Bentley:
The art of Biography
Is different from Geography,
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.
This is really a meta-Clerihew, as Clerihews are mini biographies.
The World's Shortest Clerihew
"To the Poetry Editor of the New Yorker" was composed, over breakfast, by
W.H. Auden and
Chester
Kallman, in honor of
Howard Moss,
poet, critic, and editor of poetry at
The New Yorker.
Despite or because of the poem's brevity, Auden and Kallman manage to rhyme the
names of three different people. The poem was discovered years after Auden's
death in a manuscript
notebook donated by his heirs to the
New York Public Library. It has apparently never been printed in The New
Yorker: