Half Wit--Half Wisdom:Poetry Strictly for the Bards : iUniverse : 9780595385812 : 0595385818 : 08 Feb 2006 : I can't locate the reference at the moment but from memory, Ernest Hemingway had suggested to this young writer that he read the works of other writers and then select something that he felt he could write a lot better, But, he said, be sure that the writer he selected was dead, or that writer could come back and do better than he did. Well, why not? I decided to do exactly that when I started to get serious about writing poetry. And so for my quatrain, I selected Mother Goose. I felt certain that I could do better by simply making her brutal violence a little more humorous. For example: Anna Mariah sat on a fire And burnt her poor butt to a char The pain so intense Helped her clear the back fence And launch her first flight to a star And for my limerick, I selected Lear's Book of Nonsense. To write a limerick better than he did, I would refrain from having the fifth line esse