The Everything Writing Poetry Book (34 page)

Making a Mountain out of a Molehill

To create hyperbole, take something ordinary and exaggerate it. Perhaps you agree to meet a friend for lunch and he arrives ten minutes late. When he arrives, you say, “I've been waiting here for days!” While many people use hyperbole on purpose to make a point, others use it unknowingly all the time. Do you ever use the expression “Let's eat—I'm
starving
”? If so, then you might use hyperbole more often than you think.

Hyperbole is behind the humor of Andrew Kiraly's poem “Superworld High, 1987.” In it, he exaggerates (and thereby parodies) the descriptions he finds in a high school yearbook:

From left: St. Craig,
Patron of Perpetually Interesting Hair;
Our Veiled Lady
Of Fortuitous Distraction;
Saint Mandi, Patron of the
Neverending Seafood Event,
Limited Time (plush
cartoon lobsters conspiring in the gym
to make America have fun) Only;
Saint Fran, Patron
Of Dour Librarians Whose 10:18
Snack Is Cheerios in a Sandwich Bag;

(A miracle:) all voted Most
Likely to
(
verb
),
Superworld High, 1987
.

(Not pictured: Saint Sarah,
Patron of the Cavalier,
But Principled—and Charming—
Misdeed.)

Printed with the permission of the author
.

To practice hyperbole, take a few common actions, people, or things and make them much more than they really are. Here are some ideas to start with: a tall man, a fluffy cloud, a deep pool, a firm handshake, a pleasant song. You have two general strategies you can follow to make your hyperboles. First, you can compare the item to something else. To do so, use the configuration
as (adjective) as
or
(adjective)-er than
. For example: “He is
as big as
an elephant's rear end” or “He is
bigger than
an elephant's rear end.”

Second, you can increase the size or number. For example, if there are 5 ants crawling in your kitchen, you can exaggerate by saying there are 1,000. If a person's cheeks are flushed, you can say they are deep crimson, like the color of red wine. You can exaggerate lengths of time, quantities of items, physical descriptions—almost anything you can think of.

Making a Molehill out of a Mountain

Whereas hyperbole takes something ordinary and exaggerates it, understatement can take something outrageous and make it seem ordinary. For instance, if you were standing on the deck of the
Titanic
as it was sinking, and said, “Well, this is a bit of bad luck,” you would be understating a very serious situation.

There are actually two forms of understatement you can use. One is the downplaying method, as in the previous example, and the other is called
litotes
. In this second form, you create a double negative. For example, if you ask your friend how she is feeling today and she replies, “I'm not unwell, thank you,” the double negative
not unwell
creates a litotes.

Your double negative will almost always involve a verb and an adjective or adverb. In the example “I'm not unwell, thank you,” the word
not
negates the verb
am (I'm
equals
I am
), and the
un-
prefix negates the adjective
well
. You should therefore begin with a statement having a verb and an adverb or adjective that will take a prefix like
un-
or
in-
or
dis-
or
a-
to make it negative.

Hot Cross Puns

As noted in Chapter 5, a
pun
is a play on words. Specifically, this means you are playing with the meanings or the sounds of the words you use. For example, if you say you “saw” a log, it could mean you have seen it with your eyes or cut it with a saw. Puns can be very useful in your poetry to create humor, broaden meaning, or simply display the versatility of language.

Puns in Action

Though puns have generally been considered a low form of humor, it actually takes quite a bit of skill to create clever puns. Consider the poem “The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet” by Guy Wetmore Carryl, which takes a comical look at a conversation between the spider and the famous Little Miss Muffet. The poem concludes with the following stanza:

And the Moral is this: Be it madam or miss
To whom you have something to say,
You are only absurd when you get in the curd
But you're rude when you get in the whey
.

To get a feel for puns, write a list of words in which each has more than one meaning. For example, your list could include words like
dough
(bread dough/money),
coat
(jacket/coat of paint), and
nuts
(crazy/food). Also, write out pairs of words that sound the same but mean different things. These are called
homonyms
. Some examples of homonyms are
dough/doe, heal/heel
, and
sail/sale
.

Types of Puns

Following is a list of the types of puns available to you, as appears in the book
Style and Statement
, by Corbett and Connors. Don't be thrown off by the Greek names. You don't have to remember them. The important thing is to understand the puns themselves and to learn how to use them.

•
Antanaclasis:
a word repeated in two different senses

•
Paronomasia:
words that sound alike but have different meanings

•
Syllepsis:
two senses given to a word by the other words around it

Here are examples of the three types of puns:

•
Antanaclasis:
He buttered me up with butter cookies.

•
Paronomasia:
She's an author looking for the write stuff.

•
Syllepsis:
He lost his jacket and his mind.

The pun in Guy Wetmore Carryl's poem about Little Miss Muffet would be considered paronomasia. Corbett and Connors cite the following two lines from Alexander Pope's
The Rape of the Lock
as an example of syllepsis in poetry:

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea
.

Limerick and Clerihew

Two verse forms that can be used to create humor are the
limerick
and the
clerihew
. The first is probably well known to you, but the second may be new. Both are easy to learn and will provide you with plenty of ways to impress and entertain your readers.

The Limerick

A limerick consists of nonsensical verse that pokes fun at its subject. Despite its humorous purpose, the limerick does have a few formal requirements. First, it has five lines. Second, it has a rhyme scheme. Third, it has a meter or syllable count for each line. The rhyme scheme is easy to follow: AABBA. The meter, however, can be strict or loose, depending on your needs. If you want it to be strict, then your limerick should have a dominant anapestic foot (da da DUM). You should have three anapests in lines one, two, and five, and only two in lines three and four.

If you want to be loose, then you don't have to follow the requirement for the anapest. However, you do need to have three stressed syllables in lines one, two, and five, and two stressed syllables in lines three and four. The stresses should add a lilt to the limerick, and lines three and four should remain shorter than the others. That way, you will build energy for the punch in the final line.

Here are two limericks created as examples. The first follows the strict requirements, and the second follows the loose. Read and reread both to see the difference.

There was once a young girl in row three
who grew fond of the scab on her knee.
She would scratch and would scratch
until one day it hatched!
And a bird of pink skin fluttered free!

A boy on the playground today
had something he wanted to say
to the girl on the swing
—a pretty li'l thing—
but instead he just let out a “Hey!”

Whether you make your limerick strict or loose, you should be aware of a three-part structure beneath its form. The first two lines set up the premise of the poem. The next two lines often introduce a second element. The final line delivers the punch, usually an amusing connection between parts one and two.

The Clerihew

The clerihew is named after the poet Edmund Clerihew Bentley who used the form early in the last century. Its requirements are even simpler than the limerick's. It has four lines, it states the subject of the poem as the very first line, and the rhyme scheme is AABB. Here is an example:

ice cream cone
will comfort you when you're alone.
But be sure in the end
you don't mistake it for a friend
.

Since the clerihew has fewer rules you may find it an easier form to work with than the limerick. Try writing a series of clerihews about different subjects, such as your favorite food, the daily weather, a family member, or a pet.

Epigrams

The word
epigram
, “to inscribe,” comes from the Greek and is often confused with the word
epitaph
(a message carved on a gravestone). Throughout its long history, the epigram has been used to set forth wise sayings, good advice, or personal ridicule. In some cases, epigrams are like little flashes of wit and venom; they are short in length so that the speaker can make a quick escape before a victim has the chance to respond.

Epigrams do not always rhyme, so such well-known sayings as “He who hesitates is lost” and “Good things come to those who wait” are sometimes categorized as epigrams. However, a good epigram is often written as a rhyming couplet, such as these from Benjamin Franklin's
Poor Richard's Almanac
.

He who longs for glass without the G,
Take off L and that is he
.

If you would reap praise, you must sow the seeds:
useful deeds
.

Franklin's
Poor Richard's Almanac
was widely popular in colonial America and came out in several editions. Any one of them will yield several epigrams for you. William Blake wrote a long poem,
Auguries of Innocence
, that can be dissected into a series of epigrams.

Make Epigrams Work for You

To begin writing epigrams, you might want to begin with another list. This time, you should write down the names of people who really annoy you—bad drivers, gossips, or slobs, for example. These people will be the basis of “He Who” or “She Who” epigrams like the one given earlier.

Another way to begin would be to write down any wise lessons you have learned from personal experience. You can think of something serious like “A man in motion is either chasing or fleeing,” or you can write something funny like “Don't mistake your iron for your phone.” Then see if you can make them jingle and ring using rhyme.

Finally, you should look over the figures of speech included in Chapter 5. Most of the figures listed there will turn your sayings into well-crafted epigrams. Antimetabole—reversing the word order of a pair of phrases—is used in these two sayings from Benjamin Franklin:

'Tis against some men's principle to pay interest,
and seems against others' interest to pay the principal
.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything,
may well be suspected of doing everything for money
.