Thursday, November 20, 2014

"There Was a Young Girl From St. Paul" by Anonymous

"There Was a Young Girl From St. Paul"

There was a young girl from St. Paul,
Wore a newspaper-dress to a ball.
   The dress caught on fire
   And burned her entire
Front page, sporting section and all.


This poem is a limerick which has a form that consists of a stanza with five lines and has a rhyming scheme of AABBA. The defining "foot" of this poem's meter is the anapest which consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed one. The first line traditionally introduces a person ("a young girl") and a place ("from St. Paul), with the place appearing at the end of the first line and establishing the rhyme scheme for the second and fifth lines. The next two lines are shorter than the rest but contain the most action. This leads to the final line that joins everything together and ends the poem comically. What I really enjoyed about his poem is that it has a great swing rhythm. It has a Nursery Rhyme type of feel to it where it's almost as if my voice swings back and forth as it goes through the poem. The tone is pretty humorous which is classical of a limerick.

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