Today, I'll continue my discussion of poetic forms. A few days ago, I described the pantoum, a poetic structure based on repetition of alternating lines. I also mentioned the limerick, which most of you are no-doubt familiar. A limerick is a five-line poem, in which the first two and last lines rhyme with one another, and the third and fourth lines rhyme with each other. Here's an example which most of us have heard:

  Hickory dickory dock
  The mouse ran up the clock
  The clock struck ten
  He ran down agan 
  Hickory dickory dock

I'd say that my formal introduction to the limerick happened when I was given a copy of the book Limer-Wrecks, a Mad Libs type of book. In it were a number of famous limericks with a few key words missing from each. The book then prompted one for such things as adjective and verbs rhyming with "get." One would then pester one's parents and siblings for such words and then torment reward them with jewels not unlike this one:

 There was a Young Lady of Flushing
 Who bought a large muffler for walking;
 But its weight and size,
 So petrified her eyes,
 That she very soon went back to bowling