Literacy Writing

Limerick Poems in Literacy Writing

Isaac's mission to bring literacy writing to the pub gathers steam. In fact, it is reaching a critical mass which may soon spin off to its own website rather like Rhoda's sitcom spun off Mary Tyler Moore's. He has a dream of teaching all of cultural literacy through the limerick poem, a form which is ideal for jogging the memory in a playful manner.

Isaac believes curiosity, play, and novelty are the best ways to approach learning. The lugubrious tasks of rote memorization (and of course, no one should EVER have to memorize anything!) can often be replaced with silly limerick poems, or a clever mnemonic, or a pretty mind map that demonstrates Buzan's radiant thinking.

Golden Fleece

Jason, a hero from Greece
Harbored the hope to increase
His fame with a trip
On the Argo, his ship
In a search for the rare Golden Fleece

This is a daunting task, for of course, there is so much of history, and so little of the present moment. To assist him, Isaac has enlisted the services of our Kathleen for she does not seem to be able to resist a limerick challenge under any circumstances.
Now this willingness is remarkable for Molly keeps Kathleen hopping here at the pub where all the workers are peons who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows and where most of the work involves soap, water, and appliances that must be kept running.

Howsomever, Kathleen is not the type who lives in the moment, focused upon the task at hand no matter how inane it might be, but rather she has the habit of listening to tapes or CDs while her hands set the kitchen to rights, or buss the tables, or fold the linens. Remarkably, digested information becomes limericks somewhere down the line.

Dante's Exile

The Guibellines contra the Guelphs
Caught up Dante, who then found himself
With no view of The Dome
An exiled stay-at-home
Losing friends who said "see to yourself."

No Nobles

The city of Florence, then, perchance
It was rare that its cadre of merchants
With the Guild Popolo
Threw their nobles out, so
It grew up as a center of finance.

For a serious amount of literacy writing, you may want to pre-order Literati Limericks. So here you have it, another installment of limerick writing as poetry and having to do with history, offered in no particular order. It may be that she will work her way through Hirsch's entire Cultural Literacy Dictionary turning facts into limericks and turning idioms into essays on clichés.

Augean Stables

To clean out the Augean stable
Is something of which I am able
The constant debris
In my kitchen could be
The best rival for that mess from fable.

Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan, that great lumberjack
From the frontier days of our outback.
With Babe, the Blue Ox
On my culture soapbox
Hope American myths will come back.

Today, watching Kathleen's assiduous cleaning efforts causes Isaac to wax eloquent about the dignity of labor, which, regrettably, is the only thing he has ever waxed. Housework is a struggle as unrelenting as Sisyphus's and as Herculean as that business with the Augean stables. Should those allusions escape you, visit Wikipedia for the details, for we are not Wikipedia here at the pub.