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Look up doggerel in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Doggerel, or doggrel, is poetry that is irregular in rhythm and in rhyme, often deliberately for burlesque or comic effect. Alternatively, it can mean verse which has a monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme, and cheap or trivial meaning.
The word is derived from the Middle English dogerel, probably a derivative of dog. [1] In English, it has been used as an adjective since the 14th century and a noun since at least 1630. [2]
Appearing since ancient times in the literatures of many cultures, doggerel is characteristic of nursery rhymes and children's song. [3]
The Scottish poet William McGonagall (1825–1902) has become famous for his doggerel, [4] which many remember with affection despite its seeming technical flaws, as in his poem "The Tay Bridge Disaster":
Oh! Ill-fated bridge of the silv'ry Tay,
I now must conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.
This bit of doggerel was generated by the CoPilot AI command, "Create a humorous 16-line doggerel verse that highlights how dogs are treated as members of the family and includes the phrase 'they treat dogs like people and people like dogs.'":
In cozy homes, where love abounds,
Dogs lounge on couches, wear the crowns.
They dine on gourmet treats and snacks,
While humans fetch their tennis racks.
They treat their dogs like people, true,
With birthday cakes and parties too.
The puparazzi snap their pics,
As if they're canine politics.
But when it comes to human kin,
We're scolded for our messy din.
"Sit!" they say, and "Stay!" we must,
While dogs get belly rubs and trust.
So let's embrace this canine glee,
For dogs are family, you see!
They wag their tails, we wag our chins,
In this delightful world of grins.
Hip hop lyrics have also explored the artful possibilities of doggerel. [5]
Chaucer's Tale of Sir Thopas is written in this format. It irritates the Host of The Tabard so much that he interrupts him and makes him tell a different tale.
Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet. Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance, alliteration, euphony and cacophony, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and sound symbolism, to produce musical or incantatory effects. Most poems are formatted in verse: a series or stack of lines on a page, which follow a rhythmic or other deliberate pattern. For this reason, verse has also become a synonym for poetry.
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William McGonagall was a Scottish poet and public performer. He gained notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work.
Nonsense verse is a form of nonsense literature usually employing strong prosodic elements like rhythm and rhyme. It is often whimsical and humorous in tone and employs some of the techniques of nonsense literature.
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Poetry analysis is the process of investigating the form of a poem, content, structural semiotics and history in an informed way, with the aim of heightening one's own and others' understanding and appreciation of the work.
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"The Tay Bridge Disaster" is a poem written in 1880 by the Scottish poet William McGonagall, who has been acclaimed as the worst poet in history. The poem recounts the events of the evening of 28 December 1879, when, during a severe gale, the Tay Rail Bridge at Dundee collapsed as a train was passing over it with the loss of all on board. The number of deaths was actually 75, not 90 as stated in the poem. The foundations of the bridge were not removed and are alongside the newer bridge.
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other.
Freestyle is a style of Hip Hop where an artist improvises an unwritten verse from the head, with or without instrumental beats, in which lyrics are recited with no particular subject or structure. It is similar to other improvisational music, such as jazz, where a lead instrumentalist acts as an improviser with a supporting band providing a beat. Freestyle originally was simply verse that is free of style, written rhymes that do not follow a specific subject matter, or predetermined cadence. The newer style with the improvisation grew popular starting in the early 1990s. It is now mainly associated with hip hop.
Kamaal Ibn John Fareed, better known by his stage name Q-Tip, is an American rapper, record producer, singer, and DJ. Nicknamed the Abstract, he is noted for his innovative jazz-influenced style of hip hop production and his philosophical, esoteric and introspective lyrical themes. He embarked on his music career in the late 1980s, as an MC and main producer of the influential alternative hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest. In the mid-1990s, he co-founded the production team The Ummah, followed by the release of his gold-certified solo debut Amplified in 1999. In the following decade, he released the Grammy Award-nominated album The Renaissance (2008) and the experimental album Kamaal the Abstract (2009).
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Children's poetry is poetry written for, appropriate for, or enjoyed by children.
The Tay Whale, known locally as the Monster, was a humpback whale that swam into the Firth of Tay of eastern Scotland in 1883. It was harpooned in a hunt, but escaped, and was found floating dead off Stonehaven a week later. It was towed into Dundee by a showman, John Woods, and exhibited on a train tour of Scotland and England.
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An extremely minor form in contemporary poetry, doggerel abounds in hip hop. Doggerel serves it so well because prosodic satire and parody rely on an established sense of metrical and rhyming decorum, which the contemporary print-based poetry notably lacks..