Rhyming Opawa chihuahua

Press, 11 January 1986, Page 18

Rhyming Opawa chihuahua

A Grand Limerick Tour. By J. H. Bentley and Malcolm Fraser. Benton Rosa, 1985. 136 pp. Index. $9.95. Subtitled “Original Limerick Verses on New Zealand subjects” with a reassurance that some are “suitable to be read in any company,” this neatly turned out little book provides plenty of fun despite its obvious drawbacks. There are 105 limericks, each with a page to itself and its own heading. The following, entitled “Go-Go Girl,” gives some idea of the flavour of the whole: A young woman who lived in Kaitaia Had no bounds to her sexual desire; But approached her ambitions In successive coitions With the town’s rugby team and the choir.

Most are of dubious quality. It is not enough to be able to rhyme Opawa with chihuahua, or Franz Joseph Glacier with brassiere: a successful limerick needs a definite rhythm and a clever turn of phrase, ana too many in this book seem to lack one or the other. In fact the headings are often cleverer than the verse, and the book is saved from failure by some funny mockcritical material. There is an introduction, full of solemn nonsense, by a fictitious academic, and some notes that attempt to give depth to the farcical situations and events described in the verse. Even the index raises a laugh with erudite critical terms like zeugma and ecdysis. Good fun, but not necessarily good limericks. — Glyn Strange.