Customer Reviews

Jiggery Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls, With a New Epilogue

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Higgledy Piggeldy

Amazon Booksellers,

Why do charge me so

Much for your books?!

Price as to increase your

Marketability--

Because right now, I think

You are all crooks.

(It's nice having a name that fits the meter, as it enables you to write poems about yourself)

Any fans of light poetry e.g. limericks will love this book. The writers epitomize the uber-academic approach taken by so many literary elitists, which appeals to my own betimes elitist character. For those of you unfamiliar with the form, the rules go like this:

1. Eight lines of verse in two stanzas. 2. Lines 1-3 and 5-7 are double dactyls. 3. Lines 4 and 8 are single dactyls with an added beat, and rhyme. 4. Line 1 is nonsensical 5. Line 2 is a proper noun 6. Either line 6 or line 7 must be a single-word double dactyl (e.g. "anthropoligical") 7. (my favorite rule) No single word double dactyl may be used in another poem. Ever. By anyone.

Sound tough to pen? I've tried it many a time, and I think I've come up with two poems that reflect any merit. The challenge of the form is partly what makes a clever and well executed result so much fun.

Why only four stars? The authors seem to believe that rule number 7 makes the form finite (which is perhaps why the book is out of print), that the limited number of double dactyl words in the English language will be consumed and ultimately doom the form to oblivion. There's no rule that demands that ACTUAL words endorsed by the likes of Noah Webster be used, which rather threatens the ephemeral nature of the form. Some of my best work includes words of my own smithing like 'posttransubstantiate' and 'jiggliectomy' (the removal of breast implants).

If you ever find a copy, buy it....

Oh, by the way; I already used the above words in my own work. So ha.

Jiggery, Pokery

"Jiggery Pokery"

Dactyl compendium

Self-conscious art

Volume of poems whose

Hexasyllabical

Genre was shaped by two

Dons at the start.

No doubt pressed to "publish or perish," Hecht and Hollander
not only invented their own poetic form, but then, in one
slim volume introduced it, perfected it, and then exhausted
it; all with the utmost respect for academic propriety. I
first encountered it more years ago than I care to remember
on the two-dollar shelf. It is a gem which should stand with
the classics: The Elements of Style, King Lear, The Little
Engine That Could.

The rules for the art form invented by these two neglected
geniuses (well, English professors) are simple, but
hellishly difficult to honor. Each verse starts with a
nonsense double-dactyl (a double-dactyl sounds like
something you might run across in Jurassic Park, and is just
about as difficult to tame). The second line of the
first verse must be a double-dactylic proper name, and the
antepenultimate line must be a single double-dactylic word.
With so few good double-dactylic words to go around, it's
easy to see how the form was so quickly exhausted. (It's
been at least sixteen years since I last read the book, but
if memory serves, one additional rule is that each
double-dactyl can be used but once, and then it must be
retired from use in the form forever.)

Without the "cannon" in hand, it's impossible to fully
report all the rules. Perhaps the best way to understand and
to illustrate the form is simply to quote the masters:

Jiggery-Pokery

Anthony Hollander

Two bards in one

Worked their brains in a storm

Thinking up words for the

Antepenultimate

line of this

doubly difficult form.

Sixteen years on and THAT sticks with me still! If you
should run across a copy of this inspired classic gathering
dust on a back library shelf somewhere, first, do the right
thing: offer to buy it. If that doesn't work, borrow it;
but DON'T EVER RETURN IT!

Hecht is the originator of the prose form known as the double dactyl. They are eight lines in length, broken into two groups of four. The last line of the first quatrain rhymes with the last line of the second. All the lines except the rhyming one are composed of two dactylic feet. The first line must be a double dactylic nonsense line like "Higgledy-piggledy" or "Jiggery Pokery." The second line must be a double dactylic name and somewhere in the poem, preferably in the antepenultimate (second line of the second quatrain) there must be one double dactylic line which is one word long.

This book is a collection of examples of this form of prose, and some examples are:

Higgledy-piggledy

Andrea Doria

Lives in the name of this

Glorious boat.

As I sit writing these

Non-navigational

Verses a -crash! Bang! Blurp!

Glub" . . . (end of quote).

Higgledy-piggledy

Pico Mirandola

In the Academy

Works with a will;

With what a verve he gets

Neoplatonical

Since a philanthropist's

Footing the bill!

I enjoyed this form and after trying to write them myself, realized how difficult it is to create them. Poetry that appears nonsensical yet has some meaning is very difficult to do and Hecht is to be commended for creating this form. It is not profound or loaded with metaphysical meaning, but it sure is fun to read.