One of the most touching reactions I’ve ever witnessed as an author and editor is that There Once Was a Limerick Anthology has inspired readers to write limericks about the book! Since the anthology was published by Dover Publications in 2022, people I’ve never met have shared their original limericks in emails to Dover and me as well as in online reviews. I genuinely adore limericks; this wasn’t just a one-off project. Having readers get in on the fun has…
Jimmy Carter, Presidential Poet
Posted on December 29, 2024President Jimmy Carter passed away today at 100. In 1995, he became the first president to publish a collection of poems in his lifetime: Always a Reckoning and Other Poems. Aside from John Quincy Adams’s epic poem, it is the only poetry book published by a living president. I intended to feature multiple selections by Carter in Poems by Presidents: The First-Ever Anthology, which was published by Dover Publications last year. That wasn’t feasible due to practical obstacles, but I…
Carolyn Wells in the Spotlight
Posted on May 18, 2024In February, Post Hill Press published Rebecca Rego Barry’s The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells. It’s framed as “part biography” of author Carolyn Wells and “part sleuthing narrative” to discover and celebrate her legacy, despite far-flung documents and practical obstacles. Given the pivotal role that she has played in two of my anthologies, I elatedly devoured Wells’ first-ever biography. * * * In 2022, Dover Publications published my first poetry anthology, There Once Was a Limerick Anthology. Wells is tied with…
Leap Day: Poems for a Quadrennial Occasion
Posted on February 29, 2024Happy Leap Day! This day only comes once every four years, so let’s make the most of it, in verse! I’ve blogged about my emailing pen pal Eric Jonas, especially how I’ve sent him limericks and poems about air guitar. On New Year’s Day ’16, Eric said, “Since this year is a leap year, we have an extra day to cram in even more emailing ….” This led to many emails on Leap Day! On February 29 that year, I sent him…
From Punk to Presidents: Incongruity
Posted on February 19, 2024After seven books, there’s a glaring incongruity in my oeuvre! How can someone who wrote three books about punk praise presidents? My new book, Poems by Presidents: The First-Ever Anthology, showcases presidents’ verse. I don’t offer uniformly positive depictions of presidents in the chapter introductions, criticizing Warren G. Harding’s adultery and the poor quality of James Madison’s selections. But for the most part, I offer sanitized overviews of presidents’ biographies, with a general audience in mind. Anthologizing presidents’ poems inherently…
John Quincy Adams’s “Hymn for the Twenty-Second of December”
Posted on December 22, 2023In Poems by Presidents: The First-Ever Anthology, published by Dover Publications last week, John Quincy Adams is the indisputable star, in terms of both quality and quantity—he penned about 350 poems, more than seven times as many extant poems as any other president. In a book collecting his poems shortly after his death in 1848, the publisher’s note boasted that Adams’s hymns were “among the finest devotional lyrics in our language.” One even bears today’s date, “Hymn for the Twenty-Second…
How Poems by Presidents Was Inspired by My Limerick and Acrostic Anthologies
Posted on December 13, 2023Today is the publication date for Poems by Presidents: The First-Ever Anthology. It’s my third poetry anthology to be published by Dover Publications in the last year and a half, and it was inspired by its predecessors: There Once Was a Limerick Anthology and Acrostic Poetry: The First-Ever Anthology! Whereas Poems by Presidents includes two limericks by Woodrow Wilson, There Once Was a Limerick Anthology includes one: I sat next to the Duchess at tea; It was just as I…
Negative Acrostics: “Curses of All Ages Will Attend Your Name”
Posted on September 20, 2023Acrostic Poetry: The First-Ever Anthology (published by Dover Publications last month) primarily features poems that portray subjects in a positive—often effusive—manner. That’s the primary association for this poetic form, dating back to 1599, when Sir John Davies penned 26 acrostics spelling out Queen Elizabeth I’s name. Acrostic Poetry includes only four acrostics that treat their subjects negatively, and they’re remarkable because they’re so against the grain. Highlights include a scathing selection by First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams and a poetic…
Acrostic Hybrids: Sonnets, Limericks, Haiku, and More!
Posted on August 16, 2023Acrostic Poetry: The First-Ever Anthology is out today, published by Dover Publications! The book includes several acrostic sonnets—some by Edgar Allan Poe and other renowned poets—and I considered devoting a chapter to them. Acrostic sonnets drive home the point that a poem can be both an acrostic and another form. The acrostic structure lends itself to hybridity. Here are examples of acrostic hybrids, including the acrostic sonnet, limerick, and haiku. I even created my own hybrid form: the acrostic clerihew!…
Acrostic Limericks: A Hybrid of Two Forms
Posted on April 21, 2023My most recent book, There Once Was a Limerick Anthology, was published by Dover Publications in August 2022, and my next book, Acrostic Poetry: The First-Ever Anthology, will be published by Dover in August 2023. There’s no better way to transition from one poetic form to another than by discussing a hybrid of the two: acrostic limericks! Madeleine Begun Kane, aka Mad Kane, has written myriad limericks for Mad Kane’s Humor Blog, which she founded in 2006, and runs a…