A stern taskmaster: limerick judge announces criteria

Later this evening, I will announce the winners of the iPhone Limerick Contest. But first, I thought perhaps you would like to see the care with which our judge, Modern Major General Joe, approached his task. Joe is quite the bon vivant, and also really into Gilbert & Sullivan, so obviously he's qualified. And now that he knows of this blog, I think he'll offer stiff competition come next limerick contest. But for now, his criteria:

1. Adherence to Form (1 - 8 pts) e.g. syllables/meter, rhyme scheme. This was the largest pitfall for all but a few participants. In fact, form was so spotty, that I changed my approach—if contestants at least stuck with their own syllabic approach (that is, if lines 1, 2 and 5 shared the same number of syllables, likewise, lines 3 and 4), I didn't detract nearly as much, even if the whole thing didn't mind its anaepests and such. Note to contestants: 1) count your syllables . . . just do it; it may sound okay to you, but that's because you wrote it—syllables counts don't lie; 2) if you have to make strange stresses and/or read through the poem 5 times to make the poem scan, there's something wrong—the limerick should "sing" on its own without disrupting the natural flow of the language—despite being a low form of poetry, there should be elegance in the meter; 3) Many hold that essential to a limerick is its ability to touch on (or embrace) the transgressive . . . in short, they believe that a limerick should be bawdy. I don't hold to this philosophy—but I was hoping that we might get a few naughty boys and girls in our entrant pool. Sadly, no. [ED.: As one whose first words to his J-term prof were "Fuck you," I was a bit disappointed in the cleanliness of the entries as well. We will have to fix this for the next contest.]


2. Overall Creative Quality (1-8 pts.). Were you adventuresome in your rhyme scheme? Did you greet me with something unexpected in the last line that delighted me? Did you practice with ellision or profound metaphor? A zeugma, say? Synedoche?


3. Theme (1-3 pts). Did you stay on theme? This was a free 3 points for almost everyone. The only demerits given were to poems that seemed to use the theme as an afterthought, or poems that strayed radically from the primary theme, though usually only for a line.


4. Bonus Points (1-4 pts). These were totally arbitrary, but I gave them out rather freely for anything naughty, erudition, out-of-the-box thinking, whimsicality, rhymes that may strain credulity but nonetheless succeed in delighting.

How did you do? Our TWO winners (and various runners-up) will be unveiled later this evening, right after I have some tater tots at The Bulldog.