A poem from Moog’s friend

Moog’s friend Nicola has sent in an allotment poem for the blog. Moog thinks his friend has got a vivid imagination (unlike his good self) but perhaps she shouldn’t give up her day job. Not just yet anyway:

There was a young man from Bletchley,
who tried hard to grow his own tea.
He got an allotment,
but the number of weeds meant
he got awfully bored and hungry!

Moog thinks rhyming “allotment” and “weeds meant” was nicely done, considering they can only rhyme depending on the reader’s pronunciation of allotment. Moog would have been more impressed if his friend found a rhyme for ‘Wolverton’ instead of ‘Bletchley’. [Ed: 'Wolverton' wouldn't scan, Moog].

While he had his literary criticism hat on, Moog thought it was interesting to note that if you read this limerick as prose, it actually makes very good sense; Moog’s friend hasn’t had to use any techniques such as poetic inversion to make it rhyme and force the words into the limerick format. However, if you take away the enforced rhythm and read the poem as prose you also take away the feeling of comedy that Moog’s friend has brought to the story. She uses a familiar comic tone to indicate to the reader that this isn’t meant to be taken as a pure statement of fact. So although the words aren’t funny in themselves, the limerick and the ending exclamation mark bring comic appeal to the poem.

I don’t know where Moog gets this sort of stuff from, I really don’t. We changed his food recently, it might be that I suppose.