Doggerel Totally Explained

Everything about Doggerel totally explained

Doggerel describes verse considered of little literary value. The word is derogatory, from Middle English. Doggerel might have any or all of the following failings:

trite, cliche, or overly sentimental content
forced or imprecise rhymes
faulty metre
misordering of words to force correct metre

Almost by definition examples of doggerel are not preserved, since if they've any redeeming value they're not considered doggerel. One example of doggerel might be:

ť Said the big red rooster

   to the little brown hen, ť "You haven't laid an egg

   Since goodness knows when." ť Said the little brown hen

   to the big red rooster, ť "You don't come along

   As often as you used to."

Some poets, however, make a virtue of writing what appears to be doggerel but is actually clever and entertaining despite its apparent technical faults. Such authors include:

Ogden Nash

Pam Ayres

Christina Rosetti The American comedian Steve Allen took a similar approach: dressed in a tuxedo, he'd solemnly recite inane popular song lyrics like:
:Who put the bomp in the bomp-shu-bomp-shu bomp? ť :Who put the ram in the rama-lama ding dong?

as if they were soliloquies from Keats or Shakespeare.
   A well-traveled story has a writer (Dorothy Parker, William James, Ogden Nash or Gertrude Stein in various retellings) fall asleep, and in a dream he or she receives a profound insight, which the writer makes sure to get down on paper before falling back to sleep. Come the morning, the literary celebrity discovers that the deep thought that came in a dream was:
ť Hogamus, higamus

   Men are polygamous; ť Higamus, hogamus

   Women, monogamous.
   (H. Allen Smith, in How To Write Without Knowing Nothing, attributes the verses to a Mrs. Amos Pinchot.)
   The poetry of William Topaz McGonagall is also remembered with affection by many despite its seeming technical flaws. Macaronic poetry may often be doggerel.
   In his novel Ulysses (1922), James Joyce used a sly spelling pun for "fuck" and "cunt" with the doggerel verse:

ť If you see Kay,

Tell him he may. ť See you in tea,

Tell him from me.

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