Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, August 14th, 2004.

And we have two more limericks.

Today, both are about beards.

One is by Edward Lear, called There Was an Old Man with a Beard,

and the other by Shell Silverstein, who also

did a fair trade in limerick writing, called simply My Beard. Both are fine examples of the limerick,

but I wanted to put them side by side to highlight something that I think is crucial for truly great limericks.

And that is the perfect execution of the anapestic meter.

The rhyme scheme is really important in a limerick because it creates this continuity

and gives you some sense of expectation for the final line because you already

know what sound it's going to end with. Your mind is trying to run ahead to whatever word

might go there at the end of that last line, which creates in you an anticipation for

the punchline of the joke essentially that's being told.

But what impels you through the rest of the poem towards that punchline is the anapestic meter.

And in today's poems, they'll both have funny final lines.

I think that Lear's movement is stronger and more effective because he is certainly

the deftre hand at executing that antipestic meter.

So listen to the differences for yourself.

And without further ado, here is Shel Silverstein's My Beard.

My beard grows to my toes.

I never wears no clothes.

...