Light poetry or light verse is poetry that attempts to be humorous. Light poems are usually brief, can be on a frivolous or serious subject, and often feature word play including puns, adventurous rhyme, and heavy alliteration. Typically, light verse in English is formal verse, although a few free verse poets have excelled at light verse outside the formal verse tradition.
While light poetry is sometimes condemned as doggerel or thought of as poetry composed casually, humor often makes a serious point in a subtle or subversive way. Many of the most renowned "serious" poets, such as Horace, Swift, Pope, and Auden, also excelled at light verse.
Notable poets
English
- Richard Armour
- Max Beerbohm
- Hilaire Belloc
- John Betjeman
- Morris Bishop
- Lord Byron
- C. S. Calverley
- Lewis Carroll
- Charles E. Carryl
- Brian P. Cleary
- William Rossa Cole
- Wendy Cope
- Noël Coward
- Alma Denny
- Henry Austin Dobson
- T. S. Eliot
- Willard R. Espy
- Gavin Ewart
- Charles Ghigna
- W. S. Gilbert
- Arthur Guiterman
- A. P. Herbert
- Oliver Herford
- Thomas Hood
- Frank Jacobs
- X. J. Kennedy
- Joyce La Mers
- Edward Lear
- Dennis Lee
- Newman Levy
- J. Patrick Lewis
- J. A. Lindon
- Don Marquis
- David McCord
- Phyllis McGinley
- David Morice
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Ogden Nash
- Dorothy Parker
- Alexander Pope
- Maurice Sagoff
- Shel Silverstein
- James Kenneth Stephen
- Jonathan Swift
- John Updike
- John Whitworth
- John Wilmot
German
Dutch
- Drs. P
- Kees Stip
Publications
The following periodicals regularly publish light verse:
- Able Muse
- Light (formerly Light Quarterly), a journal of light verse
- The Spectator runs regular light verse competitions
- The Washington Post runs regular light verse competitions as part of its Style Invitational
See also
- Alla barnen
- Clerihew
- Double dactyl
- Epigram
- Limerick
- McWhirtle
- Michael Braude Award for Light Verse
- Nonsense verse