One More Clerihew, for my friend, Tom Durkin

One More Clerihew, for my friend, Tom Durkin

As I mentioned once before, as I was wandering through A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch, I ran across a special term, a clerihew.  Anyway, it is right there on page 112, between "classic" and "cliche."  Quoting Mr. Hirsch, "It consists of a skewed quatrain--two rhyming couplets of unequal length that whimsically encapsulate a person's biography..."  (How can you not just love a book full of definitions like this one?)  Usually, the name of the person being sent up appears in the first couplet.  He offers this example--Today

Geoffrey Chaucer
Could hardly have been coarser
But this never harmed the sales
Of his Canterbury Tales 

Today, I pay tribute to an old friend of mine, the well-known racetrack announcer who called the Breeder's Cup races for many years and was the race caller for NBC Sports from 1984 thru 2010.  He capped his career by calling the Triple Crown races for ten years (thirty races, in all), until he gave it up in 2011.  Next month, he retires, calling his last race at New York's Saratoga Springs on August 31st.  Here is his clerihew--

Tom Durkin, he was a grand racetrack announcer,

All the races he’s called, I sure could nay count, sir.

He coined many a phrase, and polished his words,

Methinks wasting such work on those old railbirds. 

Congratulations, Tom.  The A and W's salute you.

Clerihews Are All In Fun

Clerihews Are All In Fun

To the dismay of some, I am sure, a while back I was bitten by the poetry bug.  Lately I've been exploring a reference book on poetry that I ran across.  It's called A Poet's Glossary, by Edward Hirsch (you might remember another work of his--I think-- called Cultural Literacy, he's also a poet of some renown--published eight books of poetry).

But I digress, it is chock full of definitions of poetic terms most of us have never even heard of.  Case in point, there's a poetic form I found in Mr. Hirsch's Glossary called a Clerihew--which was someone's middle name a long time ago...blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, it is right there on page 112, between "classic" and "cliche."  Quoting Mr. Hirsch, "It consists of a skewed quatrain--two rhyming couplets of unequal length that whimsically encapsulate a person's biography..."  (How can you not just love a book full of definitions like this one?)  Usually, the name of the person being sent up appears in the first couplet.  He offers this example

Geoffrey Chaucer
Could hardly have been coarser
But this never harmed the sales
Of his Canterbury Tales 

Below you will find a few of my own attempts--

Young President George W Bush
On rumors of Saddam's weapons, did not sit on his tush
He sent our armies in pursuit, but when all was said and done,
Those who went hunting chemical weapons found exactly none

Margarita Man, Jimmy Buffett
when he sailed off he had to rough it.
It seemed, he failed to pack the supplies
to make a cheeseburger in paradise.

Vladimir Putin
He's a bad man there's no disputin'
But in Crimea nearly everyone loves him s ton
If you believe those voting in the face of a gun.

Try it, it's fun, I swear it.