"Courageous Blancmange" is my attempt to pen a fifteen syllable Nonsense poem.


TRADITIONAL

Most of the best known nonsense poems employ some form of rhyming scheme. Since I was limited to a fifteen syllable format I chose not to use a rhyming scheme at all.

If you google "Nonsense Poetry" you will find that there are many references which discuss various forms of this medium.

As an example I have included a brief excerpt from an essay entitled "How to Write a Nonsense Poem" by Luke Edley


"Nonsense poetry is as old as language itself, many of which have indeed been passed down the generations in the oral folk tradition, largely as idiomatic expressions but also as nursery rhymes.

At their heart, nonsense rhymes are playful exercises in illogic which are intended to evoke humour and bewilderment in equal measure.

Some of the best nonsense poems contain words which do not even belong in the dictionary at all. Probably the most famous work of nonsense poetry is Lewis Carroll "Jabberwocky" which is contained in a book Alice discovers whilst exploring the mirror world in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Holding a mirror to the poem in the hope of making some sense of it, Alice reads it aloud:

Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky."

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe .."

DADAISM

Dadaism at the beginning of the twentieth century employed a random method of generating nonsense verse which involved cutting random words from newspapers and magazines and pasting them together. This has been replaced today by random computer generated verse.

I have no interest whatsoever in employing random generated verse. I only mention it to differentiate it from the traditional method discussed below.... only kidding... above.

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