Clerihew
A
clerihew is a humorous
verse, rather similar to a
limerick form, that generally uses the name of a well known person for one of its rhymes.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley invented the form, and after publishing the first book with the special kind of biographic verses, soon they got his name. The Clerihew is oddly, queery, rather than satirically. The form includes four free verse lines with unregular rhythm and with two pairs of rhymes (aabb). In the end of the first or second line, there is the name of the person, the clerihew is speaking about.
-
Edmund Clerihew Bentley
Worked swiftly if not gently,
Tracking murderers down by a hidden clew
In whodunit and clerihew.
- Edmund Clerihew Bentley (who devised this form)
or
- 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
They may give potted history on a particular person, but they can also be about different subjects as well as in this example:
- The subject of Biography
Is different from Geography,
Geography is about maps;
And Biography is about chaps.
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