Stan, Unsmiling Girls and the Death of Jane Austen

So, the assignment for the Creative Writing class due 23/01/12 and workshopped 23/01/12 was as follows:
"Write one of each poetic form (limerick, clerihew and acrostic) to share with the group."

So here's the limerick:

Stan

There was a young fellow named Stan
Who drove around in a really old van
He fixed it with card
And sometimes with lard
Anything as long as it ran

This is, of course, based on a true story. Except the bit about the lard. The group were amused by it's absurdity. I don't plan on writing any more about Stan for the group. On to the clerihew:

She didn’t smile

The girl selling bread
Looks more than half dead
As it transpires
She’s an immortal vampire

This did cause an argument. I liked immortal. Most of the others thought it was unnecessary and spoiled the rhythm. I thought it needed a word of some sort in there. Any thoughts?

So finally the acrostic:

Jane Austen’s Death

Turns out CSI 1817,
Undeveloped as the methods of the
Bow Street Runners were, didn’t
Even look at her body. Her death
Remains a minor mystery.
Consumption. A catch-all for
Unnumbered wasting diseases that effect the
Lungs. Addison’s disease, then undefined,
Or cancer, killer then as killer now.
Some more lurid theories appear
In time to promote books about her.

So, in conclusion, no one knows.

The inspiration for this is that the last note I made at the class when we were set this assignment was WHAT DID JANE AUSTEN DIE OF? (Caps in the original). I should really have made the acrostic "Tuberculer complications arising from Addison's disease (probably)" which would have given me space for the call to action to dig up her grave in Winchester Cathedral, make away with her body and do some forensic anthropology on it. It would have been kind of long though. Noted were the isolation of Consumption, and also the last line and my bold lack of rhyme or meter. Bold is my word. Isolating words, phrases and lines in my poems seems to be a thing with me. Oh yes.

So anyway, I'm feeling pretty poemed up, back in the swing of it. This week we do a pantun (or pantoum as Stephen Fry calls it) then week after a sonnet.

Do you want an assignment? You do? Your assignment is to write a limerick! Or a poem about Stan. Or even a limerick about Stan, although then you're getting in the ring with my one above and that's not going to be a first round knock out, I can tell you.