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stranger
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stranger
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A combination of sympathy for a friend's ill-health and today's 'Word a Day' inspired me to pen my own clerihew:
Ian Martin
Has done with partyin'
He now wisely eschews
The insidious effects of booze
I didn't think it was too bad for a first effort...
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Pooh-Bah
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Welcome helendq, I think that's excellent. As far as I can see (I shall probably be torn apart for this) yours is this board's first post on Clerihews, which I find amazing. It's a pity you didn't post it up under 'Wordplay and fun' or 'Miscellany'; unfortunately, many peoples eyes often don't drop down the Index this far. I think Coffeebean in particular would enjoy playing with Clerihews.
CB,....you there? Let's give it a bit and see what happens.
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old hand
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I'm here, but had too busy a day to come up with one. But!! I have picked up the glove, dxb!  Welcome, helendq!
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old hand
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German composer Paul Hindemith left
the Nazi regime not entirely bereft;
His repertoire is smaller
but you may recognize Mathis der Maler.
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old hand
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American author Mark Twain
had a brain of a singular strain;
but his style so witty, dry and direct
would unfortunately now be “politically incorrect.”
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old hand
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William of Normandy in 1066
brought his law and culture to the Celts and Picts.
And not without hassles,
Built a lot of castles.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Gluttonous Henry the Eighth
Wrought a departure of faith,
And to his wives as a Tudor
He couldn't be ruder.
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HelenDQ,
Her first post a clerihew,
Hurrah, she's begun,
And her posting can only add to the fun!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Politically correct
Ist
Kot und Dreck.
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old hand
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Highly acclaimed Thomas Edison
Many failed ideas did jettison,
Then finally to his delight
He perfected the incandescent light.
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Pooh-Bah
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Jones (Cathy Zeta) didn’t say “Hello”.
She felt violated, we know.
It was OK to picture that bash;
For cash.
The engineer James Watt,
Watched a boiling pot.
He thought, “Will steam lift the lid?”
It did.
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old hand
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Yo Yo Ma, clever fellow,
makes his living playing cello;
Just a $lice
would be nice.
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Carpal Tunnel
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>Just a $lice
Coffeebean, to be replete
creates a rhyme that is concrete,
in addition to
a clerihew.
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stranger
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Orlando Bloom, he leaves me smiling.
As Legolas, he's quite beguiling.
from forest glen to elvin home,
he flitters on through Tolkein's tome.
Ella Fitzgerald, her voice a bright note,
sang high and low straight from her throat.
The lady sang jazz
with a lot of pizzaz.
Jonathan Edwards, a preacher
said that God knew every creature.
and pictured sinners in God's ire,
dangling very close to fire.
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stranger
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stranger
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HelenDQ, novice of A.Word.A.Day,
Posted a clerihew to enter the fray.
Which replies made her laugh, do you suppose,
So that tea came out of her nose?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Musick is all
about how the sounds fall
the newbies must be wonderin'
what the *feck am I blubberin'
Claire and Hugh'll
go *down by the pool
it's a personal infer
as to *where down does refer
Welcome! AWAD rookies
sit down, have a cookie.
I'm enjoying the spew
of applied clerihew.
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old hand
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Sir Isaac Newton: scientist,
philosopher and alchemist,
from an apple’s inspiration
gave us the law of gravitation.
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old hand
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Robespierre, dreaming of man’s evolution,
Fueled the fires of the French Revolution
With a guillotine.
Very mean.
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Pooh-Bah
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Nice one CB!
PAINKILLER:
Elitist Jacobin, Jean Paul Marat,
Favoured the rise of the meritocrat.
While bathing his aches away
He met Charlotte Corday.
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Pooh-Bah
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Canadian General Sam Hill invented odd gadgets at will. But his orders soon got so batty His troops said "What the Sam Hill was that, eh?" (High school memory of his invention of the shovel with a hole in it that could also be used as a shield while advancing on the enemy.  )
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Pooh-Bah
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Interesting, Zed. I've heard the expression but never really wondered about it. Now I have some clues! Thanks for that learning experience! 
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My thanks also, Zed. I've heard the expression, but always assumed Sam Hill was a mock euphemism for hell. It never occurred to me that there was actually a Sam Hill being commemorated.
Bingley
Bingley
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Out of twenty-two poems posted in this thread so far, I count eight legitimate clerihews. Y'all's homework assignment is to identify them. Extra credit will be given for anyone fixing the fourteen that aren't clerihews.
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Pooh-Bah
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Is that why I had to work so hard to keep it from turning into a limerick?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Well, the clerihew is AABB and the limerick is AABBA so you just have to leave off the last line. The rhythmic pattern of a clerihew is non-existent. In fact not sticking to any pattern is encouraged. This also means that you could just as well come up with a limerick without the last line:
An aspiring young poet named Zed
Took it into her pretty young head
To dash off some lines
And put them on signs.
It's the first line that kills most of them. Mine just snuck under the wire.
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Our free lance fool
cites a rule,
while liberties he takes
and like me, the spirit, he breaks!
Of Troy,
never one to be coy-
struts her stuff!
(well, one more is enough!)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Higgledy-piggledy Ludwig van Beethoven Bored by requests for some Music to hum, Finally answered with Oversimplicity "Here's my Fifth Symphony: Duh, duh, duh, DUM!" ~~ rules to be found here: http://makeashorterlink.com/?T2E112764Post Edit:Oops  Thanks, dxb and eta!
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Pooh-Bah
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Editor of note (but quiet) AnnaSt
Said, “Look, I can out-double the rest.”
Her verses were strophic, but as for her URL in deepest pink.
Dud link.
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Carpal Tunnel
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our hero d-x-b, discovered what we all would see, that in her effort to double, Anna also doubled the http. AABB editour hero d-x-b, discovered what we all would see, that in her effort to double, Anna's http was twice the trouble.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Pooh-Bah
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Prolific poster Coffeebean
Came onboard and caused a scene.
She said punishingly "Try a Tom Swifty."
I'm addicted (ain't crossthreading nifty)
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old hand
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 You all are too nice! [blushing-aw-shucks]
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old hand
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So Faldage --
Are you going to use your red pencil and tell us where we went wrong? I thought it was safe down here in Weekly Themes . . .
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Carpal Tunnel
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where we went wrong
The first line in a clerihew is either a person's name or ends in a person's name.
Since there are so few restrictions on the clerihew, it seems a small thing to ask that the name be involved in the rhyme.
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old hand
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Oh, I thought it just had to contain the person's name. Oh well.
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old hand
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Lucy Van Pelt, of Peanuts ® fame,
Would coax Charlie Brown into a football game,
And every time – it never failed – she'd withdraw the ball,
He’d fall.
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Carpal Tunnel
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contain the person's name
Digging into it more deeply I discover that Anu seems to have been of the laxer school in his definition. Others seem more or less strict in the matter, some appearing to indicate that the first line be nothing but the person's name, one noting merely that the first line contain the person's name and the second line rhyme with the person's (which would seem to require that the pe4rson's name end the first line, but not necessarily) and some even allowing the name to be in the second line. As you so aptly put it, "Oh well."
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Carpal Tunnel
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Aw shucks. I was waiting on a ruling as to whether or not "Hugh'll" *counted.
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>a ruling as to... "Hugh'll"
I suspect that's why I came up with nine (9) instead of eight (8).
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old hand
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For dxb
Napoleon Bonaparte,
Of things military, very smart;
He overthrew the royalists when he organized a coup,
But was overthrown himself at Waterloo.
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Pooh-Bah
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That's neat Cb (In the true meaning as well as US colloquial). I guess I can only try this: Wellesley, Arthur, Sorted Iberia then went farther North to Waterloo with Blucher to dispute. Gave him the boot. It's a bit forced, but there are too many difficult rhymes in the subject matter!
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old hand
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Nicely done, dxb. Here's another one for you. I tried to make it end with Victoria, but thought the rhyme would bore ya.
Victoria, queen of longest reign,
Traveled Britain’s vast domain;
She perused,
Not at all amused.
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old hand
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Marilyn Manson:
Not what you’d call handsome,
But a master of manipulation,
Causing an unholy sensation.
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Pooh-Bah
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Who is Marilyn Manson?
Is she somebody’s grandson?
Or am I happier in my ignorance,
Perchance?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Or am I happier in my ignorance?
Yes.
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Pooh-Bah
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Brief, but to the point. 
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Pooh-Bah
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Brief she may be. Right she is. Exit, stage left.
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old hand
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Doctor Bill,
Just a tad over the hill;
Always on hand with a ref, a link, a remark or quotation:
Pillar of this organization.
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No piller I
Seeking only in the sky
Venus' hill to descry.
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stranger
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This is not original, but I like it too well to hold back:
Massenet
Never wrote a Mass in A.
It would have been just too bad
If he had.
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Pooh-Bah
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Yeah, that's a clever one. Is it an original Clerihew's clerihew?
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Carpal Tunnel
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And for those for whom the original is not sufficiently challenging we have the Thoroughew: http://www.mindspring.com/~dcqv/verse.htm
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Pooh-Bah
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Hmm. Ideally there should be a theme running through the verse and the anagram that is associated with the subject. You could waste a lot of time on that. It transcends being a snappy way of expressing a possibly clever thought and becomes a challenge. I didn't get where I am today by taking on challenges (pace Reggie Perrin's boss - CJ wasn't it?).
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stranger
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No, I checked. It is by Anthony Butts, about whom I know nothing.
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old hand
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Sir Edmund Hillary,
Unfamiliar with prison and pillory,
Vowed he would never rest
Until he’d climbed Mount Everest.
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Pooh-Bah
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'Prison' and 'pillory' seem a little gratuitous. Are you referring to an episode in Sir Edmund's life that I don't know about? Or is 'pillory' the only rhyme for Hillary?
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old hand
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I could have said "unacquainted" instead of "unfamiliar," I suppose.
Gratuitous, perhaps. It made sense (because a good man would be unfamiliar with those places) and made me smile. This is one clerihew I dashed off in about 5 minutes. Perhaps it shows.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I didn't have any problems with it. I took it just the way Coff explained it. These things are, I think, supposed to be dashed off quickly. They're not exactly ballades or Petrarchan sonnets.
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Pooh-Bah
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I didn't intend to be picky - sorry if it came out that way. I was just wondering if there was more behind it was all. Should have emoticonned. [kuriosity killing kat-e]
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old hand
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Or is 'pillory' the only rhyme for Hillary?
It was the only rhyming word that came to mind yesterday; however, this morning I thought of this one for you: Sir Edmund Hillary,
Having dodged the Nazi's artillery,
Vowed he would never rest
Until he'd climbed Mount Everest.This way it is a little more biographical. No offense taken.
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Pooh-Bah
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I *do like that! I was trying to work in 'fritillary', but I think I'll give up. Not sure if you get butterflies on the high Himalayan peaks.
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Frank Lloyd Wright,
An artist in his own right;
Some, however, may wrangle
That he came about architecture from a different angle.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Elvis
shaked his pelvis
and made the girls cry,
very few questioned why.
Cher
with long hair
sang a lot of pop.
One of my favorites? Not.
Sting
can sing
as a balladeer,
his music becomes clear.
Madonna
makes ya wanna
dance or strike a pose,
as long as you're wearing those clothes.
Eminem
raps the pen
with words from seed.
Not all feel their need.
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