Monday, September 23, 2019

The Bustard


In 1978 Isaac Asimov judged a limerick contest run by Mohegan Community College in Norwich, Conn. He chose this as the best of 12,000 entries:
The bustard’s an exquisite fowl,
With minimal reason to growl:
He escapes what would be
Illegitimacy
By grace of a fortunate vowel.
This winning limerick was written by retired Yale official George D. Vaill; of it, Asimov said, “The idea is very clever and made me laugh, and the one-word fourth line is delightful.”

1 comment:

Scott Harris said...

Thanks for memorializing this tidbit of poetic history. I only heard it read it once, being read on a PBS program decades ago. The last two lines have been with me ever since, but I could never recall middle two lines correctly. You've completed my decades-long search for the missing links.