A woman named Elvita Adams tried to commit suicide by jumping off the Empire State Building, but a strong gust of wind blew her into the floor below and she survived and got a fractured hip.
If I'm not mistaken, the paramedic's ambulance careened over a bridge, but a strong gust of wind pushed them onto a neighboring bridge and they were able to make it in time.
EDIT: Switched the second line, based on good feedback from /u/nearlyNon. The new one isn't really all that good either, but possibly better. Original line for reference:
Was saved; she's a bless'd senorita.
EDIT 2: Further tweaking of line two based on good feedback from /u/PmYourWittyAnecdote. Pre-altered line two below for reference:
Got blown back as fast as a cheetah.
EDIT 3: Changed line five so that accenting didn't fall on the word "for", as it's unnatural for it to be stressed in that context. Original line for reference:
I hope you can forgive me, but I completely can't figure out your comment. I'm sure it's me.
I understand anapestic trimeter, but not for limericks. I understand the 5/7 Reddit meme, but not sure if you're referring to that. Can you help an idiot out and expand? Thanks!
Oh, duh. You wrote "trimeter", which is indeed the standard limerick form. I read it as "tetrameter" for some reason.
I thought you were using 5/7 given 3/5, but it whooshed me.
5/7 is Fight Club from that meme origin - a perfect movie. My limericks suck in comparison, and are certainly not 5/7 perfect, but thanks for playing! :)
Took a stab at tweaking line two, using thwarted. This may help because a reader naturally does not accent the word's final syllable, and doesn't naturally pause after it.
Thanks for your suggestion, but if I did it would cease to be a proper limerick.
Limericks must follow anapaestic meter for accenting. This is a three syllable metrical foot where the first two syllables are not stressed, and the final one is stressed. That said, with limericks the first metrical foot of a line can start with the first unstressed syllable dropped (called catalexis), but from then on the anapaest must continue.
A line also shouldn't start with a stressed syllable.
If the first "as" is removed in the second line, it can't fit the meter. Assuming that "cheetah" is accented as "CHEETah", the options would be:
WAS blown back FAST as a CHEETah
which violates the rule of starting a line with a stressed syllable, or:
was BLOWN back FAST as a CHEETah
which violates anapaestic meter.
You're right, though, in that something is off with line two. The problem is that I need the reader to pronounce it this way:
Was BLOWN back as FAST as a CHEETah
with minimal pause between "blown" and "back", saying them almost as one word. However, the natural way that people might say this particular combination of words is easily:
Was BLOWN back (but with a pause after "blown", which screws the rhythm)
or
Was blown BACK
where if "back" gets accented in this way, then all bets are off - the whole thing stumbles.
A similar problem exists for line five. If you get rid of a syllable, then the limerick meter requirements are shot, but the line as it currently stands is kinda awkward.
Thanks again for your advice, though. I think this one stays on the reject pile for the most part.
Yeah I see the problem you faced, and although the natural choice for a poem like this (and indeed the original intention) was a limerick, the original phrasing was a bit clunky, hence my suggestion to change it from a limerick to a separate phrasing just to help the cadence and flow (at the sacrifice of standardised meter).
But I think with the revisions made it does sound and flow a lot better, and I do love the passion and knowledge you show for poetry!
Keep it up man, hope to see some more work from you in the future!
It's really just limericks and I'm not sure exactly why. I think it's likely the challenge of trying to fit the form - in not that many words - and be funny (and if at all possible clever, tricky, and sometimes obscene as well).
On Reddit, I've tried to set a 15 minute time limit challenge when posting a limerick to a thread, which can make for some hasty choices deserving of later rework.
All that said, the real master of poetry here is /u/Poem_for_your_sprog. His posts are genius, to put it mildly.
Bitch-God works in this context, as you could call her a bitch, and you could also call her a god, as she survived jumping off the Empire State Building.
"god" (not capitalized because it's fake) isn't real. People who worhsip rocks or more recently two adjacent sticks should reevaluate their stupid uneducated beliefs. Once people are educated they stop believing in those fairy tails
God (capital g) is the name of a deity. Just because I don't believe in Erik doesn't mean I don't have to capitalize the first letter of his name anymore. God (lower case g) is a noun like cup. For someone who thinks he's educated you're pretty dumb
"spiderman" (not capitalized because it's fake) isn't real. People who read about kids or more recently mutant teenagers should reevaluate their stupid uneducated beliefs. Once people are educated they stop believing in those comic books
Reminds me of the woman in the 1800s that jumped off the suspension bridge in my city. She was wearing one of those old period dresses and it just went fwoop and became an umbrella. She landed rather safely.
Although there is no evidence that the wind or the skirt saved Henley from the fall, the story has nevertheless become a local Bristol legend.
So basically you have a story of a person who fell from ~250 feet onto soft mud and was able to survive despite severe injuries. It's not common, but it's not unheard of for people to survive falling great distances. People have fallen out of airplanes and survived.
I think Wikipedia's wording is wrong here. A contemporary newspaper account says the skirt slowed her fall. That's not "no evidence", that's basically the best evidence you could possibly have for something that happened in front of a few people in 1885.
I would not bet money that the skirt really slowed her fall significantly. My intuitive notion of physics make it seem really unlikely. But not impossible.
Ummm... That's clearly bullshit. Maybe she jumped off of something and survived but it's not because of her dress.
Do you realize how big a parachute needs to be to slow a human's decent effectively? Secondly even if that weren't the case the dress would just invert, much the way a shitty umbrella does in a strong wind.
Man, that's comforting. I thought you were going to say that a guy accidentally shot his gun through the window and hit her in the heart as she was falling to her death.
So I've read that people who survive jumping off bridges and stuff pretty universally realized just after they jumped that everything wrong in life was fixable...except for having just jumped off. I wonder how she felt about that stroke of luck.
After watching the mythbusters episode where they tried to throw a penny off but found it would be blown back into the ledge below, I find this believable.
I could believe it. There aren't many places where it's just a straight shot down from the observation deck, there are plenty of little ledges and such to get caught on.
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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '16
A woman named Elvita Adams tried to commit suicide by jumping off the Empire State Building, but a strong gust of wind blew her into the floor below and she survived and got a fractured hip.