This is a leap year, and I have leapt into 2024 by getting Covid and a colonoscopy. Kinda hit bottom! So I would say this is a perfect time for some levity and limericks. It’s time for the 4th Annual Lefse Limerick Contest (some ta-dah fanfare, please)!
The theme: Lefse Is Life!
This year, your job as an A1 limerick writer is to create limericks (you just can’t write one, right?) that are about Lefse Is Life.
So start cranking out limericks and send them my way. The 4th Annual Lefse Limerick Contest runs through until the end of March, 2024. That means one month of oodles of doodles about Lefse Is Life.
Refresher on limerick writing:
- Make sure you have seven to nine beats in the first, second, and fifth lines, with the last word in those lines rhyming.
- Have five to seven beats in the third and fourth lines, with the last word in those lines having a different rhyme than the last word in the first, second, and fifth lines.
You will rise quickly in the ranks if your limericks about Lefse Is Life adhere to these rules, or you’re pretty close 🤓. Email your limericks to glegwold@lutefisk.com.
High Risk, High Reward
A refresher on limericks. Wikipedia defines a limerick as “a form of verse, usually humorous and frequently rude,” in five-lines. Again, the first, second and fifth lines rhyme, and the third and fourth lines, which are shorter, have a different rhyme.
The form originated in England in the 18th century and became popular in the 19th century. Wikipedia says, “Gershon Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick as a folk form is always obscene … . From a folkloric point of view, the form is essentially transgressive; violation of taboo is part of its function.”
Wikipedia cites the following example is a limerick of unknown origin:
The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
A Clean Limerick on Lefse Is Life
So you see the risk of running a Lefse Is Life Limerick Contest. To be true to form, a lefse limerick, it appears, should be “obscene” and “frequently rude” and a “violation of taboo.” Oh, dear!
Well, following the exact form of a limerick will never do in here Lefse Land. We have our fun with lefse, but we are never rude or obscene. No, no, no!
And yet … and yet … it is possible to dance along the borders of the true limerick to create an entertaining Lefse Is Life limerick. Check this out:
“Simplify, simplify,” wrote Thoreau
Keep it simple, and skip all the woe
So lefse Leif made
Then sat in the shade
Saying, “Lefse Is Life, doncha know!”
Gary Legwold
For the Lefse Is Life Limerick Contest, again, you must write a limerick about life and lefse. Go deep, go hokey, make it all one big jokey. It’s limerick time in Lefse Land!
Ok, your turn. Write your Lefse Is Life limericks and enter the contest. Keep it clean, remember, but be bold and be brave! Check out this site on how to write a limerick. Again, do your very best with having seven to nine beats in the first, second, and fifth lines with the last word in those lines rhyming. Then five to seven beats in the third and fourth lines, with the last word in those lines having a different rhyme than the last word in the first, second, and fifth lines.
Send your limerick or limericks to glegwold@lutefisk.com. Submit as many limericks as you want until midnight on March 31, 2024. Winners will be announced in my April newsletter. Oh, winners will receive:
OTHER WINNERS. If you don’t win first place, there is a chance your Lefse Is Life limerick can still win one of the following two prizes:
Now is the time for lefse limerick writers to rise up and put down bold and clever limericks on Lefse Is Life. Enter the 4th Annual Lefse Limerick Contest by emailing limericks to glegwold@lutefisk.com. You have until March 31, 2024. Good luck!