[Ed. note: I really didn’t want to recap last night’s game. The fiery hatred that the Braves offense feels toward Shelby Miller’s win total continues unabated, as the Braves scored their single run (a Jonny Gomes solo shot!) two innings after Miller left the game. There really isn’t much to say about a game when the offense got three hits. So I won’t! Now, please enjoy Blazon’s latest…]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerihew

…read this first please, it’s the easiest way to get a grasp on what’s happening and it isn’t long…plus there are several actual examples to find and enjoy…

so here’s what this is about…over the last year or two we’ve been moderately successful in incorporating verse into this baseball board from time to time…there have been limericks(5 lines, strict rules) and parodies of many sorts, most recently the 14-line sonnet which featured in the shoot-out last month on the fourth…also song parodies…all this is great and will continue hopefully…

what we’re trying to do now is encourage more people to participate, to have fun doing so and to make us all laugh…fun is a good secondary component on a board like ours which by its nature tends to be dominated by numerology, passion, anguish and pain (W/L record). And the Clerihew is so slight, so short it can be inserted anywhere, any time into a thread without disrupting it or necessarily requiring a response. And once we get the hang of it I bet the average time needed to write one is less than 10 minutes. As we move along and get more comfortable with the format there might be Clerihew threads on off days and if interest has warranted a Clerihew Competition say every quarter. Whatever is or is not wanted.

Here’s why it’s so easy to make one.  4 lines only, rhyme AABB, and forced rhymes are encouraged particularly if they sound funny…as for meter pretty much anything goes in line length specially the last line. That structure very much suits the original intent, to be biographical(see Wiki). So as Braves fan put your player on line 1 and go from there…or any other way you like, there really are no rules.

I have it on good authority that once this is posted on Monday’s off day our worthy Leader, who got a head start on the Wiki page, will post the first Clerihew. Rather like the ceremonial first pitch. I can vouch it came in comfortably and quickly. So please, everyone have a go, let’s see what happens. (Needless to say this thread is not exclusive to this project, use it for whatever, as normal.)