Double dactyls
Forget the limerick and the haiku, I have been reading today about double
dactyls, an extremely structured comical verse form. A dactyl is three
syllable word with the stress on the first syllable, like "blankety".
The double dactyl verse form is 8 lines
Blankety blankety
Blankety blankety
Blankety blankety
Blankety blank
Blankety blankety
Blankety blankety
Blankety blankety
Blankety blank
But there's more rules than that!
* The first line has to be nonsense - hickory dickery and higgledy
piggledy seem to be favourite;
* The second line has to be someone's name
* One of the lines in the second stanza has to be a single word
* The last lines of the stanzas rhyme.
The example given in UMRA, where I've been reading about this, was by
Wendy Cope:
Higgledy-piggledy
Emily Dickinson
Liked to use dashes
Instead of full stops.
Nowadays, faced with such
Idiosyncrasy,
Critics and editors
Send for the cops.
A quick google finds a page for the form on Wikipedia, with a few elegant
examples - I liked Brian Flanagan's:
Hey-nonny, ho-nonny,
Penis Van Lesbian
Entered the bus'ness that
no biz is like.
Keen on increasing his
marketability,
he took on the stage name
of Dick Van Dyke
Further googling finds the Braden Files, with three pages of double
dactyls starting at http://braden.weblogger.com/poetry/DD, including:
Pitter pat, pitter pat.
Noah of Ararat
Heard the rain cease on the
Fortieth night.
Shem, Ham, and Japheth said
Antediluvian
Meteorologists
Called it just right.
---
Higgledy Piggeldy
Baron von Frankenstein,
"Don't you get lonely?"
"Well, sir, that depends.
Through my experiments
Sociomedical
I've found a marvelous
Way to make friends!"
---
Drippity Droppity
Madame du Pompadour
Heedless of thunderclouds,
Dabbed at her rouge.
Louis, who suffered from
Pluviaphobia,
Hollered, "Allons! Avant
Nous le deluge."
---
Reddledy-Peddledy
Cardinal Richelieu
Statesman and diplomat
Nobody's stooge.
Helena Rubinstein
Cosmetologically
Honored le Duc with her
Eminence rouge.
---
Higgledy Piggledy
Ivan the Terrible
Brought to his bedroom a
Girl in her teens.
Later she said to this
Sexagenarian,
"So that's what 'Ivan the
Terrible' means!"
---
Higgledy-Piggledy
Herr Docktor Schrodinger,
Looked at his cat and thus
Killed it quite dead.
Shrugging his shoulders, he
(Deterministically)
Pronounced that it now had
Eight lives instead.
---
Higglety, pigglety
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Met in the garden a
Maiden named Maud.
There he behaved to her
Ultraplatonically
Proving conclusively
Poets are odd.
---
Higgledy Piggledy
Pamela Anderson
Draws from men's hearts all the
Evil that lurks,
Showing appendages
Supermammalian,
Proving conclusively,
Silicon works.
---
Bankapile Francopohile
Catherine de Medici
Slaughtered the Huguenots
As was her wont.
Authorized tortures like
Ganglionectomies;
"They had some nerve," she said,
"Now they sure don't."
---
Reximus seximus
Charles Philip Arthur George
Rogered Camilla with
Regal aplomb.
Antiromantically
Said "I can't marry you
Unmorganatically.
Go ask my Mom."
It's an extremely dense format, and the challenge in writing them for
yourself is the dual problems of finding a double dactyl name, and a
single dactyl word, and then putting the lot together with enough other
stuff to make sense. Limericks and haiku are trivially simple by
comparison.
Lots more here:
http://wordcraft.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/332607094/m/810106545/p/3
Midway down the thread is a huge list of double dactyl words, culminating
in the quite possibly solitary quadruple dactyl word
paradichloroaminobenzaldehyde.
Finally, the thread is taken over in style by Chris Doyle, who has had
numerous verses published under various names:
Jiggery pokery
Clifford, Lord Chatterley.
Cuckold and invalid,
Easy to con.
Nightly his lady's with
Mellors the gamekeeper
Unexpurgatedly
Getting it on.
Debbie Bennett, NYC 1989 New York Magazine
Higgledy piggledy
Dr. Ruth Westheimer
Offers these sexual
Words to the wise:
"Men must remember that
Erotogenesis
Isn't as matter of
Genital size."
Inger Pettygrove, Charlottesville, VA 1997 New York Magazine
Higgledy piggledy
Little Red Riding Hood
Skips to a fate that she
Doesn't deserve.
Lying ahead is an
Anthropophagical
Wolf for whom Grandma was
Just an hors d'oeuvre.
Louise Jackson, Fall River, MA 1989 New York Magazine
Tippeca grippeca
William H. Harrison
White House inhabitant,
Briefest to date.
Sworn into office with
Bronchopneumonia.
Thirty days later was
Lying in state.
Joan Ruttenberg, Rockville, MD 1997 New York Magazine
My own attempt:
Diddledy-diddledy
Christopher Ecclestone
Famously portrayed a
Doctor named Who
Flying about with a
Relativistically
Capable copper box
Without a loo.
