Each week, Three Word Wednesday provides a set of words as a prompt. Today's words are: Backfire, embarrass, taste
I've been feeling self-conscious about my limericks. I was fine when I thought nobody cared, or when I had a few people say that they gave a moment's pleasure. However, when I got the distinct impression that I was being looked down upon for writing limericks, it gave me pause.
Fleeting smiles and being ignored mean that my work isn't to your taste. That's fine. Having you say that nobody writes limericks, that this poetic form is not merely trivial but beneath any serious writer? That makes me wonder what I'm doing to myself and my reputation by writing them.
Wisdom comes slowly, of course, and more slowly still to a closed mind than to an open one. The wisdom I found is this: my reputation is what other people think of me. The core fact that I forgot is that I don't write poetry for YOU. I write poetry for ME. These limericks are pretty much the only poems I share with you because they are safe. They're light, amusing, nonthreatening... defanged and declawed.
So mock, mock, mock if you will. If the sight of a limerick fills you with the desire to sneer and scoff, to dismiss and deride, go ahead. Allow your preconceptions to suck the life and light out of your world and revel in your Seriousness of Purpose.
A limerick is a poem in the same way that a cupcake is food. If you can't handle the cupcakes, stay out of the pastry shop.
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
Embarrass me, mock me, deride
For my limericks with verbal elide
A backfire taste?
Of talent, a waste?
I like 'em, so why should I hide?
I've been feeling self-conscious about my limericks. I was fine when I thought nobody cared, or when I had a few people say that they gave a moment's pleasure. However, when I got the distinct impression that I was being looked down upon for writing limericks, it gave me pause.
Fleeting smiles and being ignored mean that my work isn't to your taste. That's fine. Having you say that nobody writes limericks, that this poetic form is not merely trivial but beneath any serious writer? That makes me wonder what I'm doing to myself and my reputation by writing them.
Wisdom comes slowly, of course, and more slowly still to a closed mind than to an open one. The wisdom I found is this: my reputation is what other people think of me. The core fact that I forgot is that I don't write poetry for YOU. I write poetry for ME. These limericks are pretty much the only poems I share with you because they are safe. They're light, amusing, nonthreatening... defanged and declawed.
So mock, mock, mock if you will. If the sight of a limerick fills you with the desire to sneer and scoff, to dismiss and deride, go ahead. Allow your preconceptions to suck the life and light out of your world and revel in your Seriousness of Purpose.
A limerick is a poem in the same way that a cupcake is food. If you can't handle the cupcakes, stay out of the pastry shop.
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
The lim'rick is commonly mocked,
ReplyDeleteAnd its poets denounced as half-cocked,
But we writers will play
With our words as we may,
And the rest of you all can get focked.