Limerick 14: Jeff’s Journey

Banner - sunrise on the Missouri - limerick story Jeff Shakespeare

24 June 2018
· A limerical biography of a good friend ·

People think of limericks as silly poems, but they don’t have to be. A while back I took my Sonnet 73 and rewrote it as a limerick. It was more of a challenge than starting from scratch, but that was the point of doing it. It turned out reasonably well.

This limerick is not silly. The banana slug is another matter.

  • There was a young man, Jeff Falzone
  • Left the midwestern roots he’d outgrown
  • California held more
  • Than home’s riverine shore
  • On the ocean, the sparkling sun shone

UCSC Banana Slug mascot - limerick story Jeff Shakespeare

  • So to college at UCSC
  • Psycholinguistics, psychology
  • Then grad school. After that
  • The career these begat
  • Helping others, with kind empathy
  • Work in Oregon came to fruition
  • Leaving time for a second position
  • So he got a job here
  • And that led to de Vere
  • From a nagging Who’s Shakespeare? suspicion
  • There were too many holes in the story
  • Of the self-taught Warwickshireman’s glory
  • Jonson’s Soule of the Age?
  • Bard of poem and stage?
  • Common sense countered myth trite and hoary

OSF Elizabethan stage at dusk - limerick story Jeff Shakespeare©2010 Win Goodbody

  • As Jeff watched OSF’s dramas played,
  • In his mind new conclusions were weighed
  • Stories so full of truth
  • Biographical sleuthing
  • Found answers well fit to persuade

Orange Sonnets Die - limerick story Jeff Shakespeare

  • Learned by heart all the Sonnets, did he
  • Helped by friends in ACNGB
  • 3D-printed a die
  • Roll a number, reply!
  • One to one-fifty-four, correctly
  • Many people say Oxford’s not who
  • Earned the credit that Shake-Speare is due
  • Yet his life fired his art
  • If you keep them apart
  • Who comes out the real loser? Just you
  • But without proof like manuscripts (dated)
  • Authorship spats go on unabated
  • Jeff’s not bothered by this
  • Peace of mind’s not amiss
  • Shakespeare, living, is what’s celebrated

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VERO NIHIL VERIUS