Serious Fun

In an earlier post I suggested that some forms of verse are more suited to fun than to serious poetry, and illustrated this point primarily in terms of the limerick. In fact, there are many of these forms, which may have complex rhyme schemes, rhythms, syllabic counts, rules involving repeated lines, themes or words, and so on. The limerick is one such form, as are the clerihew, and numerous so-called French Forms, such as the rondeau, the rondel, the villanelle, the triolet and the ballade. All of these verse forms have in common the fact that most versifiers saw them as too restrictive to use for serious poetry, but used them for poetic play and competition.

Oddly, there are some equally restrictive forms that have been used for serious poetry. Thus, no-one would suggest that Shakespeare’s sonnets were not serious poetry; neither would many doubt the poetic depth of the haiku of Kobayashi Issa.

I have long felt that verse-forms that have, in recent history, been confined to frivolous use are being underused, and have been trying very hard to write verses that actually say something, using forms that are usually only used to impart jokes (often lewd). What they say is often not very profound, but some make important philosophical points,and I have even used them in lectures.

I was inspired by a limerick written by W. S. Gilbert, in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera “Ruddigore” (1887):-

If you wish in this world to advance,
Your merits you’re bound to enhance.
You must stir it and stump it,
And blow your own trumpet,
Or, trust me, you haven’t a chance.

Here’s a rather less optimistic one:-

II you hope to grow gracefully old,
You should not be capricious or bold.
To do your own thing
May make your heart sing,
But it’s safer to do as you’re told.
(me)

Simple wisdom:-

Though anchorites weep as they pray,
And great sages may voice their dismay
At not knowing what’s up,
Yet the veriest pup
Knows the purpose of living is play.
(me)

Here is a different form:-

The joys of having a canine pal are almost endless.
But some puppies tend to render themselves temporarily friendless,
By not seeing distinctions that, to us, seem clear as day,
Such as those between demolition, aggravated assault, and play
(me)

Daniel Dennett is a philosopher with whose views I seldom agree, but who writes so beautifully that I cannot resist reading him. One of his views I disagree with very heartily, and I wrote the following verse to get across to my students why. :-

Daniel Dennett thinks mentalistic talk can only generate confusion,
Since consciousness and its supposed causal effects are nothing but illusion.
He argues this whenever there’s an opportunity to be had,
Because seeing people all mixed up makes him feel so very bad.
(me)

Here’s another one that deals with a popular postmodern view, which I think it totally demolishes. :-

There are people who claim truth is through,
Hors de combat, kaput, up the flue.
There’s no need to take fright,
Because if they are right,
What they’re saying just cannot be true.
(me)

Finally—-you may be relieved to know—–here’s one I didn’t share with my students:-

When, after a life that was nasty, brutish and, no doubt, all too short,
I inevitably find myself arraigned before a higher court,
I intend, though it may seem outrageous insubordination,
To bring counter suit against the Lord for malcreation.

The versatile limerick

Verse is, of course, a medium in which great poets pass on their unique insights into life, the world and the universe. It is also a flexible medium with which to have fun. People of all ages and levels of poetical sophistication have, throughout history, played with rhyme and rhythm for pleasure, as an intellectual challenge, to demonstrate their cleverness, and in competition with others. Quite a lot of verse forms with particular rhythmic patterns and rhyme schemes have been developed for this kind of play.

Perhaps the best-known of these is the limerick, which became popular in the nineteenth century, The form is strongly associated with socially unacceptable humour, though this does not seem to have diminished its popularity. I shall have more to say about the limerick in later posts, but this time I shall illustrate one consequence of its familiarity, which is that one can have fun by playing with the form itself.

For example:
There was a young man of Japan,
Whose poetry never would scan.
When they said this was so,
He replied “Yes, I know,” but I always do my level best to cram as many words into the last line as ever I possibly can.”
(not totally original, but modified by “me”)

Also:
Another young bard, of Utrecht,
Has a flair for dramatic effecht
His verses all tend
To come to an end
Quite suddenly.
(not totally original, but modified by “me”)

On a slightly different track:
There was a young poet whose verse
Could not have been possibly less satisfactory.
He failed, time after time,
To find a good matching-word;
He suffered, it seemed, from a hex.
(me)

As I said, the limerick will return, together with other verse-forms, such as the clerihew.

Friday the13th

It is always quite entertaining when people who set out to “debunk” common beliefs or superstitions end up with egg on their faces. Strangely, they usually don’t need to be very embarrassed, because such failures tend not to get extensive publicity, or to be long remembered.

An outstanding example was the research conducted in 1993 by a team led by Dr Tom Scanlon, of MidDowns Health Authority, in the U.K. They set out to show that Friday the 13th was no more unlucky than Friday the 6th. They compared traffic information relating to a local motorway and local supermarket shopping statistics for all the Friday the 13ths and 6ths over five years; there were six such pairs. What they found was that people were less likely to use the motorway on the 13ths, but that the risk of accidents, and injuries, was significantly higher if they did. They calculated that the risk of accident was about 52 percent higher on the 13ths, and the risk of hospitalization was about 50 percent higher. Interestingly, there tended to be more shoppers, rather than fewer, so people were not staying home, but we’re probably tending to avoid private transport.

I believe that full moons have also widely been found to be associated with increased activity at hospital emergency departments.

One might reasonably conclude that the world is rather more complicated than the sorts of people who join skeptics societies would like it to be, or can comfortably cope with.

Lucky Thirteen?

Here are some charmingly coincidental mathematical facts:
“TWELVE PLUS ONE” just happens to have 13 letters,
as does “ELEVEN PLUS TWO.”

So, of course, does “SIX GREEN FLIES,” but there’s nothing particularly interesting about that.
———————————-

Withe regard to my previous post “Sudden Death Problem,” my favourite “solution” is as follows:
The girl asked for a glass of water because she had hiccups. The bartender had been told the condition could be cured by a sudden shock, and wanted to help. Sadly, he thought the gun was unloaded.

Perhaps you can find a “better” explanation.

Lucky 13?

Here are some charmingly coincidental mathematical facts:
“TWELVE PLUS ONE” just happens to have 13 (12+1) letters,
as does “ELEVEN PLUS TWO.”

So, of course, does “SIX GREEN FLIES,” but there’s nothing particularly interesting about that.
———————————-

Withe regard to my previous post “Sudden Death Problem,” my favourite “solution” is as follows:
The girl asked for a glass of water because she had hiccups. The bartender had been told the condition could be cured by a sudden shock, and wanted to help. Sadly, he thought the gun was unloaded.

Perhaps you can find a “better” explanation.

Sudden death problem

What follows is a lateral thinking problem. It cannot be solved by any kind of calculation, and has no single “correct” solution. You will almost certainly know when you find a satisfactory one. I shall tell you my favourite solution in a later post.

So here goes:

An attractive young woman enters a bar, approaches the barkeeper, and asks for a glass of water. The barkeeper, normally a gentle and friendly soul, scowls fiercely, snatches a handgun from behind the counter, and shoots her dead.

Explain what happened.

Extreme Trivia

The other day I came across an item in a newspaper that catapulted me into a series of thoughts which resulted, I believe, in a much improved appreciation of the role of context in determining what is and what is not “trivial.” I shall walk you through my sequence of thoughts, and you can decide what you think.

The item in question remarked in passing that actor Jeff Goldblum was able to wiggle either of his ears while not wiggling the other. Initially, I thought that piece of information was, if true, so trivial that it called for the defining of a new category of trivia, which I initially labelled “Extreme Trivia.” I subsequently considered “Supertrivia” and “Hypertrivia” (my favourite), and considered a posting to this blog introducing the concept. However, I soon found myself drawn into an internal discussion of the concept of triviality itself.

Consider my first reaction to the ear-wiggling information. It depended on my feeling that there was no sense in which this info about Jeff Goldblum was useful. However, if I was a competitor on a big-money quiz show, and a question requiring this “trivium” came up. Then, surely, it would cease to be trivial. This example makes it clear that what is trivial depends on context.

Again, suppose someone who encountered the Goldblum info would, without it, have assumed that it was not possible for a person to wiggle his ears independently. Assuming he believed the item, he or she would now know that at least one person could do this, and that it was therefore quite possible that some others could, too. Surely, for this particular reader, the information would no longer be quite trivial. Oddly, in one way it still would be trivial to this person. His or her enlightenment experience is not necessarily associated with Jeff Goldblum; learning that anyone could carry out this feat would have had the same effect on him or her.

However, it is possible to envisage a situation in which this info about Jeff Goldblum would not be in any sense trivial. Imagine that a scientifically sophisticated writer is preparing an article about Jeff Goldblum when he or she comes across the info about his ear-wiggling. He might know that people can teach themselves to control all sorts of unexpected things by determinedly trying again and again and repeating whatever they did that gave them even the slightest trace of success. However, this kind of learning process requires a special kind of persistence which very few people have. And the writer will now know about Jeff Goldblum that he possesses this special kind of persistence, and that may make a very big difference to his or her article.

It is tempting to speculate that there is no item of trivia that cannot be detrivialized by context.