To: Dan Webster, staff writer
From: Kathleen Gilligan, lifestyles editor
Subject: Story idea.
OK, here's one that might appeal to you: Have we ever done a reader favorite limerick contest? (OK, we certainly couldn't use some -- most? -- of them, but we'd have fun reading them, now wouldn't we?)
To: Kathleen Gilligan, lifestyles editor
From: Dan Webster, staff writer
Subject: Story idea.
Though the day is dark and stormy
your idea holds wonders for me.
I hesitate only
because of the lonely
thought that the readers may bore me.
To: Spokesman-Review readers
From: Dan Webster, staff writer
Subject: Ouch!
I know what you're thinking.
How could I, one, demean your potentially prodigious literary talents and, two, subject you then to such scurrilous doggerel.
Easy. I'll do most anything for a story. And this seemed like a natural way to challenge those of you who think you have what it takes to be a limerick maestro.
Thus, the following invitation: We challenge you, our loyal readers, to write a limerick, in traditional form, on the following subject -- life in the Inland Northwest.
You can write about any aspect of life that you want -- Spokane's sharklike parking-meter patrol, weekends at "the lake," Pend Oreille County politics, B basketball, potholes, pickup trucks, pickup travails of swinging singles, North Idaho bed-and-breakfasts, garage sale ventures, harvest dances, weed-whacking in Washtucna ... and so on.
What is the traditional limerick form? Well, let's review.
A limerick is a five-line poem, almost exclusively humorous, that follows a set style: the first, second and fifth lines share meter and end rhyme; the third and fourth lines are shorter and share their own meter and rhyme.
For example, some of the first limericks ever to achieve widespread popularity were included in Edward Lear's 1846 "Book of Nonsense." One example:
"There was an old man with a beard,
"Who said: 'It is just as I feared,
"Two owls and a hen
"Four larks and a wren
"Have all built their nests in my beard."
Yet the limerick as an art predates Lear by maybe as much as a century. Earliest reports date from 18th-century Ireland.
The verse form's actual origin is unknown, but some scholars theorize that the name comes from, naturally enough, the Irish town of Limerick. Seems partygoers of the era liked to drink, sing nonsense rhymes and follow them with a chorus that included the line, "Will you come up to Limerick?"
Sounds like Jack & Dan's after a Utah Jazz victory.
Whatever, the Oxford Companion to English Literature reports that the first limericks were included in such collections as "The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women" (1820) and "Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Gentlemen" (1821).
All of this, of course, is wonderful. But these Lear-like bits of poetic whimsy are hardly the kinds of limericks that most of us first learned.
Most limericks are off-color and bluer than Coeur d'Alene Lake. One quick look on the Internet will show you a half-dozen Web sites boasting a variety of limerick styles, hardly any of which you'd want to show to Grandma.
Of course, Grandma probably could tell you a few of her own.
In fact, she might be a good source for our limerick contest. But whatever the source, try your hand.
We'll choose what we consider to be the most inventive, most clever and - this part is important - least offensive limericks of the lot, and we'll publish them in the paper.
Your deadline is Monday, March 23.
Send your efforts to: Limerick Contest, Features Department, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA 99210. Or e-mail them to danw@spokesman.com.
