Wicked Wednesday

John Wirenius, whose delightful sequel to Anthony Trollope's "Palliser" series Phineas At Bay I have had the pleasure of editing, has suggested that I indulge myself once a week by having an official Wicked Wednesday.  Therefore, I am going to set forth the rules of writing a Double Dactyl poem, give you an example of one of mine, and then invite all of you to get wicked as well by writing one, too.

What is a dactyl, you ask? (Or maybe you already know, in which case, skip to the next paragraph.)  No, no, nothing to do with flying dinosaurs.  A dactyl, in poetry, is a set of three syllables in a line of metered verse that puts the stress on the first syllable.  Actually, it's sort of a verbal waltz - ONE-two-three, ONE- two-three!

So a double dactyl simply means that each line has a grand total of six syllables, and when you read it out loud, it should have that good old "Tales from the Vienna Woods" beat - "ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three!"

A Double Dactyl poem is similar to a limerick much of the time, because it is usually comic in nature, as the rhythm lends itself nicely to bawdiness  Here are the rules:

- Each poem is eight lines long.  Two stanzas, four lines apiece.

- Each line is double dactyl meter, except for the fourth and eighth which are two beats short (DUM-da-da-DUM).

- The first line is nonsense (Higgledy-piggledy, Humpety-dumpety, or just a sing-song two-word rhyme - whatever sounds good and silly)

- The second line names the person it's about.  That person's name should be a natural double dactyl:
 EM-i-ly DICK-in-son, WILL-iam De BLAS-i-o, HANS Chris-tian AN-der-sen... you get the idea.

- The fourth and eighth lines have a strong rhyme; other lines need not rhyme.

- One line in the second stanza (usually the sixth line) must be a SINGLE six-syllable, double-dactyl word.

I expect you're all counting on your fingers right about now, furiously leafing through your mental cache of history books, celebrity expose magazines, and Favorite Literary Characters (TESS of the D'UR-ber-villes, anyone?)

So here is an example to start you off.  Remember, as you write that this is Wicked Wednesday.  In observance of Wicked Wednesday, the high moral tone and rigid exclusion of words for which Mother would wash out our mouths with soap that are normally the standard of this page are relaxed for the day.  Anything for a rhyme.  Ready - set - GO!

Haughtily, naughtily

Vladimir Nabokov

 Jeered dirty writers and

Heaped them with scorn

Till the adventures of

Nymphomaniacal

Lo carved his name in the

Annals of porn.