Rhyme & reason

Pierre S. du Pont

Could afford Vermont,

But was pleased with his share

Of Delaware.

That little rhyme is a clerihew, compliments of famed book buyer Paul Ingram of Iowa City.

Ingram has assembled more than a hundred of the silly, mischievous rhymes, nice and naughty, in an illustrated collection, 'The Lost Clerihews of Paul Ingram” (146 pages, Ice Cube Press, $19.95).

Ingram wrote most of the clerihews - which always start with the name of a famous person and follow an AABB rhyming scheme, usually with a mocking twist - about 20 years ago. They were 'lost” until he uncovered a bunch of them in his basement.

'The process (of writing them) seemed involuntary, rather quick Tourette's-like explosions,” he explains in the book's introduction.

Ingram discovered clerihews - the form is more well-known in England than in the United States - in a literary magazine. It was love at first sight.

'It was so funny, and I felt so naughty liking it,” he says. 'I found a deep pleasure in transgression, transgressing, going just to a line that you shouldn't go past, and sometimes going past it, because the rhyme is just too good.

'The point is that form is more important than substance. If you get a good rhyme, go with it. The point of none of these is to reveal truth. If any of them do, that's even cooler.”

Willa Cather

Would really have rather

Been William or Walt

Though it wasn't her fault.

An English crime writer, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, invented clerihews in the early 1900s, feeling limericks had descended into obligatory naughtiness, and he wanted a rhyming scheme that children (and adults) could play around with. Distinguished poet W.H. Auden wrote a book of clerihews, 'Academic Graffiti,” published in 1971, but the form mostly has fallen into disuse.

'The clerihews that took possession of me were of a particularly vicious strain” and their creation was spontaneous, Ingram notes. He wrote the 'Vivian Vance/Put cheese in her pants” clerihew while walking along the street with F. John Herbert, co-founder of CSPS in Cedar Rapids.

Ingram, 67, is down to working three days a week as the book buyer at Prairie Lights Books, a calling he's pursued since 1989, with earlier stints at University Book Store and Iowa Book and Supply, all in Iowa City.

'It's the only grown-up job I've ever had,” he says. 'One of the things about being in a bookstore is that you're around every second of popular culture. You're around not only literary and historical names, but TV names, all that stuff.”

Ingram, one of the best-read individuals in Iowa, also has met hundreds of writers and poets during his years at Prairie Lights. So he's had lots of inspiration when it comes to poking gentle fun. He's an equal opportunity wit, too - with jabs at those black, Jewish, gay, blind, presidential - 'but I tried not to make any of them derogatory,” he says.

Some of Ingram's clerihews and accompanying illustrations (by Julia Anderson-Miller) are 'a little racy, though none of them is too awful,” Ingram adds. 'I'd be really disappointed if some people weren't mad at some of them, though I'd be horrified if it became a huge movement against Ingram clerihews.”

Launch party

'What: Launch party for Paul Ingram's 'The Lost Clerihews of Paul Ingram”

'When: 5 p.m. June 23

'Where: Prairie Lights Cafe, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City

'Cost: Free