The People of Spain Think Cervantes -- Edmund Clerihew Bentley

(Poem #1446) The People of Spain Think Cervantes The people of Spain think Cervantes Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes; An opinion resented most bitterly By the people of Italy. -- Edmund Clerihew Bentley

Bentley's eponymous invention, the clerihew, is one of those simple ideas
that seem so natural in retrospect. Humorous biographies are nothing new, of
course, but the formal structure of the clerihew lends them a certain extra
something, in much the same way that the structure of a limerick predisposes
the reader to expect humour, and thereby enhances that humour.

And the clerihew espouses a particularly irreverent form of humour. To begin
with, the idea of summarising someone's life in four lines already calls for
a certain lack of regard, a willingness to pick out the most salient feature
and satirise that. And then there are the rhymes - Nash may have lent a
certain respectability to the bad rhyme, but the clerihew practically
institutionalises it, to the extent that I feel slightly cheated if there
isn't at least a hint of contrivedness. And the short lines and rhyming
couplets give the poem a breezy, dashed-off feel that reinforces this
irreverence - a perfect contrast to the hundreds of serious (and often
deadly serious) eulogies out there.

martin

Clerihews -- Edmund Clerihew Bentley

(Poem #207) Clerihews The art of Biography Is different from Geography. Geography is about maps, But Biography is about chaps. Sir Christopher Wren Said, 'I am going to dine with some men. If anyone calls Say I am designing St. Paul's.' John Stuart Mill, By a mighty effort of will, Overcame his natural bonhomie And wrote 'Principles of Political Economy.' What I like about Clive Is that he is no longer alive. There is a great deal to be said For being dead. Edward the Confessor Slept under the dresser. When that began to pall, He slept in the hall. Chapman & Hall Swore not at all. Mr Chapman's yea was yea, And Mr Hall's nay was nay. It was a weakness of Voltaire's To forget to say his prayers, And one which to his shame He never overcame. -- Edmund Clerihew Bentley

from 'Biography for Beginners', 1905.

Not many poets can lay claim to inventing a poetic form; still fewer have had
forms named after them. Lucky old ECB :-).

thomas.

PS. Again, having such an odd middle name helps :-)

[Biography]

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) is remembered mainly for his classic
detective story Trent's Last Case and for the verse form that was named after
him - the clerihew. It was at the age of sixteen, while he was at St. Paul's
School in London, that Bentley first started writing clerihews, as a diversion
from school work. G. K. Chesterton, Bentley's life-long friend, was at St.
Paul's at the same time, and he too wrote clerihews.

Here is one of Bentley's original clerihews from this period:
    Sir Humphrey Davy
    Abominated gravy.
    He lived in the odium
    Of having discovered sodium.

Bentley's first collection of verse in this vein was published in 1905 as
Biography For Beginners. Further collections appeared in 1929 and in 1939. It
was soon after publication of the first volume that the name 'clerihew' became
applied to this particular form of light verse. What exactly is a clerihew?
Frances Stillman in The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary defines it as 'a
humorous pseudo-biographical quatrain, rhymed as two couplets, with line of
uneven length more or less in the rhythm of prose'. Add to this, that the name
of the subject usually ends the first or, less often, the second line, and that
the humour of the clerihew is whimsical rather than satiric, and there you have
a complete definition.

    -- http://thinks.com/words/clerihew.htm