Double Dactyl Sins Of Commission Higgledy-Piggledy José Barroso Poem by Jonathan ROBIN

(6 December 2009)
The double dactyl stanza, created in the 1960s by Paul Pascal and Anthony Hecht, required that the first line be nonsense syllables [e.g. Higgledy-piggledy, hence the form's alternative name], that the second be a proper name [Emily Dickinson, Theodore Roosevelt, etc.], that one line, usually the sixth, consist of a single didactylic word, and that the catalectic [shortened] fourth and eighth lines rhyme. Such verses were discrete comments on the person named. Adapting the stanza to longer narratives in rendering Shakespeare and nursery rhymes and tales into dactyls, can be fun