Apparently April is poetry month...

[highlyeccentric]

And I don't have the energy to either write or find a Good Poem to post. So have, instead, a limerick:

Some primal termite knocked on wood,
tasted it, and found it good:
and that is why your Auntie May
fell through the parlour floor today.

- Ogden Nash

Comments

[simon-stylites.livejournal.com]

(That's utterly not a limerick. Wrong rhythm, wrong rhyme scheme, etc.)

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Well bugger. What is it, then?

[simon-stylites.livejournal.com]

Limericks are dactylic. (Or amphibrach, if you like.)

duh DAH duh duh DAH duh duh DAH duh
duh DAH duh duh DAH duh duh DAH duh
duh DAH duh duh DAH
duh DAH duh duh DAH
duh DAH duh duh DAH duh duh DAH duh

And they rhyme AABBA.

This is two rhymed couplets in iambic tetrameter.

duh DAH duh DAH duh DAH duh DAH

Tetrameter is usually (in English) pretty singsong-y. It is really balanced, and you can get an entire clause into a line of tetrameter, whereas pentameter is a bit longer, usually has a sense break (that is, it's often in two clauses) and is less balanced (because five is prime).

Tetrameter is pretty common in children's poetry, whether iambic or trochaic.

Etc., etc.