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    A Quizzical Verse: Limericks Comic and Not
    A Quizzical Verse: Limericks Comic and Not
    A Quizzical Verse: Limericks Comic and Not
    Ebook29 pages11 minutes

    A Quizzical Verse: Limericks Comic and Not

    By Michael R. Collings

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    About this ebook

    Everyone knows about limericks--five short lines packed with twists and turns, comic rhymes, frequent tongue-twisters, and a rollicking meter that just won’t quit. In this book you will find nearly seventy limericks ranging from limericks about limericks, to limericks that explore oddly distorted views of history, to limericks that play with the frequent conundrums presented by English spelling.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael R. Collings
    Release dateSep 22, 2010
    ISBN9781452370347
    A Quizzical Verse: Limericks Comic and Not
    Author

    Michael R. Collings

    I am a professor emeritus of English at Pepperdine University in Malibu CA (although my retirement home is in southwestern Idaho). During my twenty-seven years at Pepperdine I taught everything from Freshman Composition to Advanced Grammar to Business Writing; from Survey of English Literature to Milton and the Epic; from Introduction to Creative Writing to Senior Seminars in Writing.Along the way, I discovered the joys of writing, not just to meet requirements for graduate degrees or to insure tenure, but for myself--saying things in a way that might make my thoughts more interesting for readers and thereby invite them back into the books I talked about. Most of my academic writing relates to authors I love: John Milton, the great 17th-century English poet, on the one hand; Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Piers Anthony, and additional science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers on the other.But my real love now is creative writing: novels, short stories, and most especially poetry. My offerings range from the three-line haiku found in Tissue Promises to a 6,500-line epic, The Nephiad. And everything in between.Please let me know what you think at my website: http://www.starshineandshadows.com/

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      Book preview

      A Quizzical Verse - Michael R. Collings

      Contents

      Introduction: Limericks on Limericks

      Everyday

      Higher Education

      Mad Science

      Oh, You Animal!

      The March of History

      Novelists, Poets and Other Oddities

      Worlds Beyond

      On the Vagaries of Spelling and Pronunciation

      Not Quite So Nice

      Epilogue

      Other books by Michael R. Collings

      About the Author

      Introduction: Limericks on Limericks

      1.

      To limericks I am addicted

      (Others, more cruel, say afflicted)--

      Though my meter may bobble,

      My rhyme schemes may wobble,

      My passion can’t be contradicted.

      2.

      A limerick’s a blind fit of rhyme;

      It will hinder you, time after time

      From imagery dense

      Or pretense of sense--

      But when it clicks, it is simply divine.

      3.

      A limerick’s a quizzical verse

      To thought and to reason averse;

      But it marches its meter

      By gallon or liter

      Till the rhythm is finally dispersed.

      4.

      The limerick’s base rhythm is

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