I like cheese.

[reverie]

An exercise in Skeltonic verse.

 

I like cheese

but not fleas

Or those that sneeze

In my food

for that's rude

Like walking nude

In front of kids

Best better hid

The slide that slid

Out out of control

That terrible troll

Who pays his toll

Hey I'm on a roll

Please don't be droll

 

 

***

 

Well that was fun. A little short for skeltonic verse, but i'm tired and it was getting nonsensical. I haven't quite got a handle on the scarcasim element yet. Hmm, might be better if a I had a clear target to focus on oh well. These poems are meant to be written fast and improvised anyway, so I figure you have to write a ton of them before lightening really strikes.

[Sweetcherrie]

Skeltonic Verse: The name of a poetic form of short lines (averaging from three to six words) whose rhymes are continued as long as the poet feels it’s working well. Also known as “Tumbling Verse” because of the way the lines tumble out of the poets brain. Named after it’s inventor the English Poet John Skelton (ca. 1460-1529).

 

Wanted to look it up to see what you were talking about exactly

 

I like this part best

 

Or those that sneeze

In my food

for that's rude

Like walking nude

In front of kids

It's funny and it makes sense, while at the same time you get a sort of message across.

 

Then in the end I think it gets less good, specifically the last two lines

 

Hey I'm on a roll

Please don't be droll

The rhyme is fine, but the topic is entirely lost there. I know that the description of the poem says that it's written as long as the poet has words tumbling out of his head, but these lines just seem awkward to me.

 

Seems like a fun way to write poetry though

[reverie]

Yeah, it's good thing to try when you're bored. It's also great way to say @$!$#! you to your poetry professor when he demands you write in a tradition form, but you don't want too. That's actually similar to reason why John Skelton invented it in the first place. He was rebelling against high poetic form, and in it he found it was a great way to satirically attack his enemies too.

 

 

And yeah the last lines sloppy, that's why I ended it.

 

thanks,

 

rev...

Edited August 8, 2006 by reverie

[Parmenion]

Oooooh, now that looks like much fun! Never heard of this style of writing before and cheers for sharing this example, which I did enjoy reading.

 

Have you any more exmaples or know of any good old ones?

 

[reverie]

Not so much online. I originally came into contact with style after meeting the poet Kim Addonizio at a reading. She recommended her book (of course) for novice poets interested in a simple approach to writing in form.

 

The Poet's Companion Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux

 

I like it, and it's a decent enough book, but I wanted more detail from it. Addonizio intentionally left the book bare though because she didn't want to intimidate beginners.

 

It's has few example in it. I've seen other stuff on the web, but I guess the style is so old a lot of it was written in archaic English or some other dialect and I didn't really get it.

 

Here's an example of me imitating skeltonic verse in an acrostic. It's not really true skeltonic though, because the lines weren't mainly improvised, each line was contrived to fit the first letter of my acrostic. So this is a slowed down more methodical (but complicated) way I came up with of doing something with skelly's verse.

 

From Norman Rockwell’s: The Discovery

 

Hmm, actually if you want to get down to it, the Rockwell poem is really a combination of three Styles:

 

Skeltonic, acrostic, and Ars Poetica.

 

"Ars Poetica" is basically writing a poem about a piece of art and or picture.

Still, I think the intersection of these three styles really amounts to a train wreck of creative over-reaching.

But, hey I was experimenting.

Edited August 19, 2006 by reverie

[Tanuchan]

*thinks it interesting and very fun*

 

This seems something I'd like to try some day - having a topic and working only on rhyming .

 

Other than that, I agree with Sweet; it flows spontaneously and it's funny, and you knew when to stop so it didn't go stale.

 

Thank you for bringing this to us, rev .