From the Foreword

I first became enamored of the limerick form while playing rugby in college. It seemed the genre naturally lent itself to the filthy lyrics of bawdy songs favored by ruggers at post-match debauches. It was a simple, and therefore easy, form to memorize and recall even under the influence of vast amounts of beer.

Over the years I found that I had a knack for writing limericks that enabled me to produce long-form limerick poems on special occasions for the amusement of friends and family.

Inspired by Calvin Trillin’s “Deadline Poet” column in The Nation, I endeavored to write satirical limericks on politics and news of the day for that august online publication, Pensito Review, to which I contribute along with fellow editors Jon Ponder and Trish Ponder. Indeed, it was Jon who coined the category name “Poetic Justice” for my limerick output on Pensito.

Now, some 400-plus limericks later, the Pensito Review editorial department has decided to collaborate on an electronic book that collects a selection of my rhyming output taking as its subject the recent presidential campaign, including the Republican primary race, which provided such perfect fodder for the limericist’s pen, though admittedly often wielded imperfectly (see “A Note on Style” in the book).

In reading and selecting poems for this collection it occurred to me that some of them are actually pretty good, while others, like ninth-grade essays, are sincere attempts that failed, but I published them anyway with a callous disregard for my reader(s). You will find examples of both the pretty good and the merely sincere and much in between in this collection.

It is my sincere hope that some of these attempts at satirical lyrics bring a grin or a grimace or best yet, both – to your countenance, gentle reader.

Buck Banks

Miami, Florida

November 2012