A Rich Orgy of Witty Ditties

When asked to compose a wry ditty, All rhymers from country and city Every Susan and Dick Came up with a trick To write limericks nitty and gritty.

The prize was a mere $50, but when Connecticut's Mohegan Community College called for a competition, 12,000 limericks arrived from every state and a couple of foreign countries. The absurdly prolific science writer Isaac Asimov, who numbers three volumes of Lecherous Limericks among his 180 or so published books, volunteered to be the judge.

How could he refuse? After Robert Rue, president of Mohegan, and Creative Writing Teacher Jim Coleman had decided on the contest, Rue sent Asimov a communique:

A national limerick contest With entries from Presque Isle to Point Quonset A bit you'd be paid Thus the gauntlet is laid For you to accept from the onset.

Notices to 3,300 colleges and universities, plus a wire-service story, brought the limericks rolling in. "The limerick," explained Rue, "is a non-threatening art form. People will write a limerick when poetry would scare the hell out of them." Members of the Mohegan community got together for one ten-hour limericking marathon to choose 86 finalists for Asimov.

Although the limerick form appears in few prosody handbooks, Asimov followed strict, traditional rules. Limericks must have five lines. The first, second and fifth lines must all rhyme, while the third and fourth follow another rhyme (a,a,b,b,a). There are 13 feet, or stressed syllables, to the limerick--no more, no less. The typical foot is an anapest, that is, two unstressed syllables preceding an accented one (da-da-DAH), or sometimes an iamb (da-DAH).

A complete story must be told in 34 to 49 syllables. Asimov likes them to be not only clever but also a bit vulgar. "Clean limericks lack flavor--like vanilla ice cream or pound cake," he claims. "They are perfectly edible but, to my taste, are tame, flat and unsatisfying." Nonetheless, Asimov awarded first prize to this limerick by George Vaill, retired secretary of Yale University:

The bustard's an exquisite fowl With minimal reason to growl: He escapes what would be Illegitimacy By grace of a fortunate vowel.

Although the judge found the lines "alas, not very lecherous," he was "delighted" by the one-word fourth line. Some of the five runners-up were slightly--but only slightly--bawdier. New Jerseyite David Rochford wrote:

A profligate professor named Pease Conquered co-eds with consummate ease, And while most would succumb On the spot, there were some Whom he had to seduce by degrees.

Although a number of the 86 finalists were women, none won awards. Asimov felt confirmed in his thesis concerning women and limericks. "Women tend to be dirtier but less clever than men," he says. "I don't know why, but they can be surprisingly vulgar."

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