Talk:Clerihew

Clerihews on and under Mt. Olympus
Congratulations on your fine article on clerihews.

A section on my website is distinctive in that its numerous clerihews cover not only biography but also mythology.

For that reason, I am submitting this section for your consideration as a proposed link, www.benandverse.com/writings/index.htm

This is from a section I have just added to my website, a literary miscellany, called “Phony Pearls of Fictitious Wisdom”.

My original website, “Ben and Verse,” is devoted to Ben Franklin. It received the A+ award from the www.englishwebteacher.com (together with a link from the Franklin Institute).

The original website has persisted for years; I have instructed my executors that both the original website and this new addition shall remain unchanged until long after my death.

I’d consider it an honor to receive a link from the Wikipedia.

Sincerely,

John McCall Mccall63@aol.com


 * I've added a link to the above site. 62.136.143.124 22:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, linking to personal web sites is inappropriate, as stated in Wikipedia's external links policy ("Links to blogs and personal web pages [should be avoided], except those written by a recognized authority"). --McGeddon 09:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Respectfully submitted
Ladislao Josef Bíró

Is writing’s great hero;

He did not disappoint

When he invented the ballpoint.

60 years ago. Bog 18:57, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Too many Clerihews
This article seems to have turned into a sort of list of Clerihews, which is beyond the scope of this article. It should only contain a few examples of Clerihews, not be an anthology of them. So I have deleted most of them and left a few representative examples; the cut ones are below. 62.136.143.124 22:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Another about a famous UK scientist:


 * Sir James Dewar
 * Is better than you are.
 * None of you asses
 * Can liquefy gasses!

(Named as a Clarihew of the time in )


 * 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.


 * Carl Gustav Jung
 * was very well hung,
 * a fact which annoyed
 * Sigmund Freud.


 * 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)


 * 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 occurred.
 * One can only wonder
 * At so grotesque a blunder.


 * Paula Regnier
 * Will have quite a career
 * One can attest
 * Via the size of her chest.
 * (Credited to Paul D. Joachim)


 * Ted Hughes,
 * Sylvias muse,
 * was rather good-looking.
 * Let his wife do the cooking.
 * (Credited to Caroline Dworin)


 * Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
 * His books are always such a bore.
 * Especially the most recent of his,
 * Communicating Sequential Processes.


 * Google Reader's
 * built with electrons and leptons, meters and liters.
 * We're off dealing with those particles
 * so we can bring you your articles.
 * (maintenance page seen on http://www.google.com/reader/view/, credited to Daniel Bentley)


 * Ted Hughes
 * Never wrote clerihews,
 * It was his fate
 * To become Poet Laureate.


 * Edmund Clerihew Bentley
 * was evidently
 * a man
 * who could not get his verses to scan


 * What I like about Clive
 * Is that he is no longer alive.
 * There is much to be said
 * For being dead.


 * I'm restroring the George III one, as it is arguably the most famous of all. JH (talk page) 21:25, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Project Gutenberg Accepts Ben & Verse
Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg has accepted a large section of my website for the collection of classics available for downloading.

This will be a rare honor for a website not in print.

It would be ridiculous to claim that my website is of the same literary value as the classics in that collection. However, given this recognition,I request that you consider restoring the link to my website. (Persons raising the objection would need to consult Michael Hart at this time since the title does not now appear in the Project's listing.)

Can a website be merely "personal" when endorsed by an internationally acclaimed institution?

I submit this inquiry with the greatest respect for Wikipedia, which, I believe, like Project Gutenberg, is one of the prime contributors to the advancement of knowledge and understanding.

John McCall

PS Clerihew lovers! Please forgive the somber tone here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.250.127.18 (talk) 17:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Please Bring Back Brief Candles
I am asking you to restore to your bibliography "Brief Candles: 101 Clerihews" by Henry Taylor. This book is widely considered to be the most signficant contriubution to the form for generations.

Technically, one might exclude sources of notable clerihews on the grounds that they do not reflect research or discussions of technique, and, clearly, with countless earnest applicants to Wikipedia, a line should be drawn somewhere. However, the Guidelines themselves indicate that exclusions should be made judiciously. Here are some reasons that I believe that the application should be flexible in the case of the clerihew.

The clerihew is a rather esoteric form of light verse, eagerly read by a few. Many who refer to this article already know the definition. Many are mainly interested in finding more clerihews.

Those who do not know clerihews, but have only seen the word can, I believe, only get to know them from examples. For them the deifnition and a brief discussion is important, but the glory of the form lies the humorous and imaginative application.

Believe me, as an editor, I realize that exclusions are very important, especially on the Internet, but please don't snuff out Brief Candles. In my opinion any bibliography that omits it is defective.

Sincerely,

John McCall

Please Delete Statement on Gutenberg
I'm asking someone -- with the authority to do so -- to delete my statement on Project Gutenberg. I feel that this kind of name dropping is not in my own best interests -- and even though I am not profiting commercially, it may prove embarrassing to Project Gutenberg.

I would like to remove any statements of mine on Wikipedia that mention Project Gutenberg. However, in my burst of enthusiasm over my acceptance, I mentioned the fact a number of places I cannot recall. Perhaps those who are editors would be kind enough to detect and delete those statements as well. Sorry for my poor judgment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.205.29.116 (talk) 22:03, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The Wikipedia definition of a Clerihew
The Oxford Clerihew examples, and all the Clerihews I have seen use a first line which is solely the subject's name.

This is the main feature of the Clerihew. Otherwise it is merely a 4 line verse about a person, not a Clerihew.

The uncited definition, which allows other words in the first line, is not generally accepted and certainly not in the UK.

This article offers Games magazine 1983 as a source of alternative "Clerihews". Although this is undoubtedly a profound reference you may wish to reconsider its inclusion here.

I suggest you base a definition on the OUP examples which are longstanding and authoritative. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.211.75.89 (talk) 09:51, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Not true. I have the complete clerihews of Bentley in front of me (and surely his own usage must be accepted as fundamental to the definition), and more than half have other words in the first line besides the name of the subject. The one beginning "What I like about Clive", quoted above on this talk-page, is one of Bentley's.
 * On the other hand, the statement that "the third and fourth lines are usually longer than the first two" is definitely not true of Bentley's clerihews. There is no general pattern regarding relative line-lengths, provided they are irregular. Disproportionately long third and fourth lines tend to be a feature of second-rate imitations. Vilĉjo (talk) 19:41, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Non-biographical clerihews
My additional section on non-biographical clerihews has been reverted by on the grounds that "clerihews are biographical by definition". By whose definition? The examples I gave were written and published by E.C. Bentley, whose views presumably count for something. The first of them, "The Art of Biography ...", appears in Biography for Beginners in precisely the same format as all the other, biographical, clerihews (including a cartoon), and is only distinguished from them by being the first in the book, and being titled "Introductory Remarks". The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (ed. Ian Ousby, 1993 edn, p. 184) defines a clerihew as "A comic verse form invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, consisting of two rhyming couplets designed to sum up a subject or character", and then gives a single example, which is none other than "The Art of Biography ...". Reword if you like, but just reverting seems suspiciously like WP:JDL. GrindtXX (talk) 21:05, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * "By whose definition?" By WP's own definition: "A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem" and "A clerihew has the following properties: - It is biographical ..." [emphasis added]


 * The so-called "non-biographical clerihews" are simply Bentley's use of the clerihew form to make (amusing) comments on the art of biography and biographic style. That doesn't make them in themselves clerihews.


 * Cambridge and Oxford seem at odds here (not for the first time). The Oxford definition: "A short comic or nonsensical verse, typically in two rhyming couplets with lines of unequal length and referring to a famous person". [emphasis added] -- Jmc (talk) 20:23, 22 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm sure you are experienced enough to know that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, so quoting the article's own definition is worthless. I am quite happy to accept that the "classic" clerihew is biographical, which is why I didn't alter the lead or definition, why I added my new section at the end of the article, and why I opened it "Although clerihews are conventionally biographical in subject-matter ...". However, if the inventor of the genre has also written certain additional verses in "the clerihew form", I don't think that's unworthy of a passing mention. Besides that, "The Art of Biography" is, as its use by the Cambridge Guide suggests, one of the best known of all clerihews (or, if you insist, "poems in the clerihew form"). Googling "But Biography is about chaps" gets 51,000 hits (several admittedly misattributed to somebody called Eric Bentley), compared with 30,000 for "Say I am designing St. Paul's". I thinks it's worth inclusion here, with a comment on its being a departure from the classic formula. You are showing distinct signs of wanting to claim ownership of this article. The opinion of a third party would be appreciated. GrindtXX (talk) 13:20, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * My point in quoting the WP definition was to show that in an article which defines (reliably or not) a clerihew to be "a biographical poem" with one of its properties being that "it is biographical", we can't sensibly have a section headed "Non-biographical clerihews"; in the context of this article, it's an oxymoron.


 * Either the article would have to be rewritten to define 'clerihew' more broadly or the proposed additional section would have to be explicitly about other verses in the clerihew form. -- Jmc (talk) 21:45, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I see nothing oxymoronic in introducing a subject by saying "Here is the strict and narrow definition", before going on to say, in extended discussion, "However, there are also departures from the norm and variations on the theme". I have no great desire to change the lead or definition, and I have already said I am quite happy to amend my wording. So how about we title the section "Other uses of the form" (that's quite clumsy, so feel free to suggest an alternative), and begin it "The clerihew form has also occasionally been used for non-biographical verses. Bentley opened his Biography for Beginners ... [etc.]"? GrindtXX (talk) 12:42, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm happy with the proposed section under the heading "Other uses of the form" (I have no more felicitous title to suggest). I persist in thinking "Non-biographical clerihews" oxymoronic in the context of this article (like "Non-lethal executions"). -- Jmc (talk) 10:26, 27 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I have restored the section amended as above. GrindtXX (talk) 23:55, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Difference from Balliol Rhymes?
See Talk:Balliol_rhyme TinaFromTexas (talk) 17:47, 23 July 2016 (UTC)