Here’s the assignment for Day 2:
- Prompt: journey
- Form: limerick
- Device: alliteration
limerick
Limericks are traditionally composed of five lines of verse. The traditional rhyming scheme of a limerick is a a b b a — the first two lines rhyme, then the next two, and the final verse rhymes with the first couplet.
Write a limerick — or two or five, if you wish to create a narrative cycle — and inject this form with something personal and surprising. Break the pattern if you need to — and if it serves the purpose of your poem.
alliteration
Use of the same consonant multiple times in proximity.
Writing Process
I managed to come up with two different starts. In both cases the first four lines came fairly quickly, but that final line, with its rhyme to the initial couplet, eluded me. I ended up with these, which should be read as separate, not part of a narrative cycle (although the concept of a narrative cycle intrigues me):
For two thousand miles I drove,
Ever forward I strove,
To reach my new home
From one I’d outgrown,
In a new place I knew I would love.
Writing all over the place,
Trying this memoir to ace.
“Slow down,” said my brain
In a constant refrain.
“Life writing should not be a race.”
But then there came the challenge of alliteration. I tend to use frequent alliteration in my writing. I usually don’t consciously write it, but I do notice it when it appears on the page or the screen. But where was it when I needed it?
So I put this project aside and moved on to another one. And, as so often happens, I found an alliterative line in something else I wrote:
Why in the world would …?
What happens if I start with this as a final line and write the previous four lines around it? So I completed the line, compounding the alliteration:
Why in the world would I wait?
Now for the rest of the limerick, incorporating the concept of a journey.
Rhyming words (for the opening couplet):
- hate
- date
- late
- fate
- mate
- straight
- trait
- gate
- great
- grate
- state
- rate
- bait
Life’s journey is not always straight
Because of our fickle friend, fate.
But a journey circuitous
Is uplifting, not ruinous.
So why in the world would I wait?
And notice the alliteration in the second line!
