I’m in the early stages of forming some general rules/guidelines for scoring limericks. So far what I’ve come up with is a set up pluses and minuses:
- Cleverness only wins points if it’s not at the expense of rhyme/meter. Breaking the rules because you know them has never been impressive to me in and of itself.
- Humor is always a positive. Note that cleverness and humor aren’t the same thing.
- The punch-line must be symbolically relevant to the entire setup. No filler lines to get where you’re going more quickly, and no twist ending that’s completely non sequitur and renders the first four lines unimportant.
- Mentioning the word Limerick or referring to its format ALWAYS loses points, no matter how funny or clever it is. If the humor was worth the violation, then it will more than make up for this loss.
- Doodoo jokes are almost always funny, but depending on the situation can contribute positively or negatively to the score.
- Ignore punctuation unless it somehow effects rhyme or meter, or alternatives would have made the limerick more clever, funny, or relevant.
If any of you knows of an existing or better grading scheme, please clue me in. I’ll refine these as I go, but here’s my first attempt at a real critique. I’ll stick to a 10-point scale until I come up with a better system:
There is a young poet named Herman.
He’s not very good, but he’s learnin’,
Though he often offends
Because he so often ends
Alle sein Limericks auf Deutsch.
This one is borderline. It’s very clever, but is it truly funny? I don’t really think so.
- 5 points for cleverness. (I think I like this rule because it means that a limerick with a truly clever limerick with no other critical remarks, negative or positive, gets a solid F.)
- 1 point for funniness. This is almost a cheat, because it’s barely funny, but I have to at least acknowledge the humor. If my scoring ended here, it would just barely pass on cleverness and mediocre humor.
- -2 points for mentioning Limericks AND referring to their format.
- -2 points for breaking the format without a substantially humorous payoff. Not an enormous hit because it only broke rhyme on the final word, and meter was maintained.
This leaves us with a final score of 2. My first thought is that such a miserable failure indicates the author should give up hope of ever writing a truly funny limerick and consider seeking counseling for what is probably a very annoying Grammar Nazi habit among his friends.
I won’t go into how I can discern, based on five lines, that this guy is the type of asshole who corrects his friends for their/they’re/there violations and dangling modifiers in familiar speech with obvious and unambiguous meanings. I’m a recovering GN myself, so I know what dark times lay ahead for this poor soul. There’s no such thing as full recovery. Lines must be drawn, but one can educate without lecturing. One fight I will never give up is over the use of the word “literally” when the intended meaning is obviously quite opposite. Example: “When we finally got to our table, I was literally eating like a horse.” Really? You were literally eating grains or grass while down on all fours?
However, the poet is obviously comfortable enough with the format and skilled enough at composition to at least attempt the dangerous meta-limerick, so I think he may have it in him. It may even be possible to bring this particular limerick up to a passing grade with some tweaking, but I would suggest further practice within the box first. The concept of this limerick is somewhat novel, but it would take a very skilled Jew (or a few Irishmen) to to really fix it up. Some of its cleverness actually relies on the German and rule-breaking of the last line. Simply leaving the last line in English would gain back both formatting points, preserve its single humor point, but lose enough cleverness points to keep it well below passing.