Like Jesus, she felt God-forsaken,
like Joan of Arc, wanted a stake in
a life full of meaning,
a life undemeaning—
like Jung, she was simply myth-taken.
This limerick was originally published in Light. As far as I remember, I didn’t have anyone in mind when writing it, it was done for the pure wordplay of the rhythm and rhyme, the repetition of the J-names in the long lines and the near-identical nature of the short lines, and of course the final pun.
Formal verse covers a lot of territory from limericks at one extreme to Paradise Lost at the other. Personally, I’ll take Lear over Milton any day.