There Was an Old Man of St. Paul

The Luxury of Limericks

By: Garrison Keillor

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Hardcover | 1 January 2021

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Edward Lear made the form popular for children, and Anon wrote the great dirty limericks, and Garrison Keillor does both while pushing the limerick envelope. E.g.

Here is a yawp for old Walt
Whitman, who's well worth his salt
Though sometimes he'll slip
And just let her rip
And say: "Camerados! What is this blade of grass? Who am I?
Who are you?" And you have to say HALT.

Of course he deals in the vulgar. And the semi-salacious:

Chopin wrote a lovely etude
That, when performed in the nude
By a mademoiselle
Who plays fairly well
Can certainly uplift the mood.

Many are educational, including his 26-limerick abecedary for English majors. And also:

The Confederate general Bob E. Lee
Committed treason quite freely
And General Grant
Beat him up cause you can't
Attack federal troops...I mean really.
He's written limericks in honor of friends, members of the New York Philharmonic, his daughter's teachers, a quintuple for Emily Dickinson, and one for his ophthalmologist.

My eye surgeon, good Dr. Khanna,
Looked through her eyepiece down on a
Novelist's retina
Who thought he was gettin' a
Vision of the blessed Madonna.

Woven through the verses are terse reflections on daily life, work, faith, and the old man of St. Paul whose office was a toilet stall.

Industry Reviews

Praise for Garrison Keillor: "Keillor is very clearly a genius. His range and stamina alone are incredible . . . and he has the genuine wisdom of a Cosby or Mark Twain. He's consistently funny about Midwestern fatalism . . . A masterful storyteller."--Sam Anderson, Slate "A literary cartographer would find it necessary to trace, in forceful blue lines, tributary streams running from Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson to the Wobegonian river of stories and novels that has issued from Garrison Keillor for more than 20 years."--Chicago Tribune "America's foremost humorist and social pundit . . . Keillor's running commentary about the human condition has the uncanny ability to home in on the pulse of America."--PBS "Keillor has always been a great cataloger, equal parts Homer and Montgomery Ward . . . as aware of life's betrayals and griefs as [he] is of the grace notes and buffooneries that leaven everyday existence. Keillor's Lake Wobegon books have become a set of synoptic gospels, full of wistfulness and futility yet somehow spangled with hope."--Thomas Mallon, New York Times Book Review "[Keillor's] taste is excellent . . . [H]e knows good poetry."--Booklist, on Good Poems for Hard Times "Keillor has a way of reconciling seeming contradictions. A purveyor of all things folksy and down-home, he is a highly cultivated, worldly man."--AARP

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