Back in the days of crayons and blocks, every kid wanted the sixty-four box. I was low-spirited; told my talent merited just eight colors of Cray-kray knockoffs.
Childhood Limerick
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Category Archives: Limerick
Conspiracy Theorist’s Limerick
A conspiracy theorist wouldn't take shots - claimed they were laced with tracking nanobots. But he never left home without taking his phone which constantly triangulated his exact spot.
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Physician’s Limerick
There was a mean old physician who'd always been on a grand mission to make patients thinner. He told them for dinner they should only eat what they caught fishin'.
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BOOK REVIEW: There Once Was A Limerick Anthology Ed. by Michael Croland
There Once Was a Limerick Anthology: Lewis Carroll, Robert Frost, Edward Lear, Mark Twain, Carolyn Wells, Woodrow Wilson and Others by Michael CrolandMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Release Date: August 17, 2022
This little book gathers a diverse collection of about 350 limericks. [Limericks are a five-line poetic form with an aabba rhyme scheme and short -b lines, and are often humorous – or, at least, punny, quirky, or absurd. The form often uses forced rhymes or contorted language as part of the humor, leaning into the genre’s lowbrow image.] For those who’ve read Edward Lear and may be concerned that these limericks will, like much of Lear’s work, lack punch and humor to the modern ear, that’s not the case. The selected limericks include many clever and witty examples that land as well today as ever. [Lest it sound like I’m dissing Lear, I agree with Langford Reed’s limerick included in this edition – i.e. “We should never forget // That we owe him a debt”]
The limericks are grouped by a classification scheme. The book starts with the most common categories — those that feature locations or proper names in the lead line. It has a few chapters that play with language, twisting it about through misspellings or plays on abbreviations. There’s a chapter that is all tongue twisters. Two of the more popular chapters are toward the end. One is a collection of limericks written by famous writers and personalities, such as: Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and Robert Frost. The other features ribald limericks. For many, ribald and risqué is what comes to mind when one thinks of limericks – e.g. “There once was a young man from Nantucket.” This book aims for a general audience, and – therefore – avoids the edgiest of material, but it’s good that they realized they couldn’t dodge bawdy and raunchy material altogether, and still claim to be an overview of the form.
I enjoyed reading this collection tremendously. With so much public domain content, I thought there might be a lot of limericks that wouldn’t land, but – on the contrary – most were clever and fun. If you’re a fan of the form, this book is definitely worth reading. And it’s part of the Dover Thrift Edition collection, so no doubt you can pick it up for a song.
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Luddite Limerick
There was a crotchety old luddite who smashed all technology on sight... 'til he needed Google to look up "centrifugal" else it'd be the bus to the library at night.
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The Optimist [Limerick]
A man laid down with a wound to the head. The doctor claimed he was already dead. "It's really not so bad. This one time I had two swords in my brain," the optimist said.
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The Skepticism-less Skeptic [Limerick]
The philosopher, René Descartes, said, "I'll doubt everything, just to start." but once he "proved" God, what are the odds, the wheels rolled off his skeptical cart.
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Astronomical Fail [Limerick]
The astronomer Francesco Sizzi worked himself into a tizzy: "More rocks in space? There're seven holes in a face! Pssh! Galileo calls himself scientist, but is he?"
Note: When Galileo suggested Jupiter had moons, Sizzi summarily rejected the idea based on the “rationale” that there couldn’t be more than seven natural satellites because there are seven holes in a mammal’s head, seven days in a week, and [somehow] seven metals… ergo, seven astronomical bodies, maximum.
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Ancestral Mathematics Limerick
A scholar who loved precise specificity was asked about his exact ethnicity. "That very much depends how far back one extends: I'm seven-eighths Brit, but all Kenyan - for simplicity."
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Strangler Fig Limerick
There was a man who lived in the jungle -oh! A fig took root in the roof of his bungalow. 'Twas a spotless hut, 'til the door grew shut, and the place was overcome by a fungal growth.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 