Even LDS apologists are confused about LGBT church policy

[Dr. Shades]

No, my meter is not off. Here's the proof:

The poem apparently attempts to be written in anapestic tetrameter, which is two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, four times per line. With a dash as an unstressed syllable and an asterisk as a stressed one, each line should read like this: --*--*--*--* (as in, "'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house"). Let's read it out loud and see what we get:

In the land of green Jell-O and casseroles galore, --*--*--*---* (extraneous unstressed syllable in the final anapest)
The Mormons laugh quietly behind every door. -*--*---*--* (missing unstressed syllable in the first anapest; extraneous unstressed syllable in the third anapest)
They watch the Evangelicals with a smile that's quite wide, -*-***----*--* (butchered to Hell, only the final anapest is correctly metered)
For calling them goobers, oh what a wild ride! -*--*--*--* (missing unstressed syllable in the first anapest)
"These folks think we're odd with our temples and ties, -*--*--*--* (missing unstressed syllable in the first anapest)
But their hallelujahs? Oh, what a surprise!" --*-**-*--* (completely screwed up second and third anapest)

The Evangelicals, they prance and they preach, -***---*--* (again, butchered to Hell, with only the final anapest correctly metered)
With their fire and brimstone, they sure like to teach. --*-**-*--* (again, screwed up second and third anapest)
Mormons chuckle softly at the showy display, --*-*---*--* (missing unstressed syllable in the second anapest, extraneous one in the third)
"Goobers, you say? Well, bless your sweet day!" *--*-*--* (TWO missing unstressed syllables in the first anapest, with a single missing one in the third)
They swap tales of meetings that last all night, -*--*--*-* (first and last anapests each missing an unstressed syllable)
Grinning at goobers with a twinkle, pure delight. *--*---*-*-* (butchered beyond recognition)

You may have "thought it read fine," but that's only because you merely skimmed it in your head. You didn't read it out loud with your voice. Try doing the latter, then tell me my meter is off.

You would be wrong in thinking you know what other people do.

I repeat, "maybe your meter is off."

If you honest-to-God think that maybe my meter is off, then please map what you believe to be the stressed and unstressed syllables in the poem.

[I Have Questions]

In the land of green Jell-O and casseroles galore,
The Mormons laugh quietly behind every door.
They watch the Evangelicals with a smile that's quite wide,
For calling them goobers, oh what a wild ride!
"These folks think we're odd with our temples and ties,
But their hallelujahs? Oh, what a surprise!"

The Evangelicals, they prance and they preach,
With their fire and brimstone, they sure like to teach.
Mormons chuckle softly at the showy display,
"Goobers, you say? Well, bless your sweet day!"
They swap tales of meetings that last all night,
Grinning at goobers with a twinkle, pure delight.

The meter is way off.

Prior to posting a poem, please read it out loud to yourself. Then fix the places that don't match up.

I read the poem. Twice. Reads fine to me, regardless of how you wish to meter it in your own head.

[Dr. Shades]

The meter is way off.

Prior to posting a poem, please read it out loud to yourself. Then fix the places that don't match up.

I read the poem. Twice.

True, but you have to read it OUT LOUD, using your actual VOICE.

[huckelberry]

I have never heard that there was a law that requires doggerel to fit traditional poetic form exactly. Heck there are even good poems that may include a trespass or two.

[Physics Guy]

There was a young bard of Japan
Whose limericks never would scan.
When they said this was so,
He replied, “Yes, I know,
“But I always make a point of trying to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.”

[drumdude]

I wish I found some better sounds no one's ever heard
I wish I had a better voice that sang some better words
I wish I found some chords in an order that is new
I wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I sang
I was told when I get older, all my fears would shrink
But now I'm insecure, and I care what people think

[Physics Guy]

Just how strictly you're supposed to scan isn't clear. You can get away with a bit of metrical dodging, cramming in an extra syllable here and there if it's a short, unemphatic one, or pausing on a syllable for a beat if it seems natural. Gerard Manley Hopkins got away with pushing the envelope quite far this way. He described his verse as having "sprung rhythm", meaning that it had shock absorbers like a "sprung" carriage.

There are also famous poems that have regular meters that aren't simple.

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.

That's three amphibrachs and an iamb, I guess, but it feels like a rapid jumble of beats; the same jumble repeats for sixty lines like the long flat-out gallop that it describes.

A perfect, steady drumbeat in the rhythm can be dull, on the other hand. Even famous poems that ostensibly follow a rigid meter often have a few slight glitches. The seventh line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", forces us to pronounce "sometime" with emphasis on the second syllable.

And every fair from fair sometime declines

And what Hamlet ever told us, "to BE or NOT to BE that IS the QUEStion", instead of naturally emphasising the "THAT"?

Sometimes there is tension between the meter of the verse and the emphasis pattern that makes most sense. You can get away with this in English because although most words have a correct emphasis pattern, we sometimes shift this to emphasize a point. "I said I was goING to the store, not that I had already gone!" So a slightly weird emphasis can be okay now and then. And on the other hand a slight disruption in a regular meter can make one word stand out. So a good Hamlet probably gives THAT a bit more emphasis than the meter requires, but also gives IS a bit more emphasis than it usually gets, and the thought strikes the audience more than it otherwise would, for both reasons.

Playing with stuff like that, within both meter and pronunciation, is often what makes good poems good.

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.

The problem is, of course, that doing that kind of thing well is harder, not easier, than strictly following a simple meter. So I'm willing to skim over some of the irregularities to which Shades objects in the goober poem, but there are a few lines that do clunk. I can stretch "fire" to "fi-yer" and "well" to "we-ell" and still sound like something people do say, for example. For me the last line is unsalvageable, though. It's just bad.

[huckelberry]

Wikipedia has limerick examples including the good one Physics Guy posted with the long last line.

I enjoyed another which absolutely refuses to rhyme when it is supposed to:

Other parodies deliberately break the rhyme scheme, like the following example, attributed to W. S. Gilbert:

There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp,
When asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
I'm so glad it wasn't a hornet."

[Physics Guy]

W.H. Auden
W. H. Auden
W H Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden wrote a poem, "Petition", as seven half-rhyming couplets. The paired final syllables are all things like "itch" and "touch".

Auden might have thought of doing it as a joke initially, for all I know, but actually the whole poem is in an odd kind of register, with unusual word choices and associations that remind me a bit of someone with some aphasia trying to say something important. To me the effect is moving. Not only do I not really notice all the missed rhymes, but I suspect the half-rhyming may be subtly helping the poem to create its mood.

[malkie]

May I join in the off-topic Limerick fun?

I don't remember if I posted this set of three limericks before. I came across the first one many, many years ago. If I recall correctly, it was at a conference on SGML, so that gives you an idea. It may even have been Yuri Rubinsky who told it - I met him many times in Toronto, where I was working in the mid-80s.

According to my memory, I created the second and third on the spot, though I've since been told that several close cousins in wording existed. I see now that the essence has been extended to six-line (and perhaps beyond) limericks.

There was a young man from Peru
Whose Limericks end on line two

There was a young man from Verdun