Double-Dactyls Info

History

In Jiggery-pokery (discussed presently), poet Anthony Hecht explains (pg. 14–20) how the form was invented. In September 1951, he "became a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome", and on (implied to be the following) November 3rd^[4], he showed a poem ("Japan") to Paul and Naomi Pascal.

They questioned him about "Schistosomiasis Japonica" (referring to Schistosoma japonicum, a parasite). The first word was on one line, and Hecht told them: "It had always been my ambition [...] to write a poem with a reasonably long line that was one word long, as T. S. Eliot did in ‘Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service’[,] which has for its first line, ‘Polyphiloprogenitive’. As you see, in my poem[,] Schistosomiasis has a line all to itself." Paul then pointed out that although the poem was iambic, the word was dactylic.

At this, Naomi "detected something crestfallen" in Hecht, and "suggested that if Schistosomiasis did not properly fit[, ]perhaps a new form could be devised to which it would be better suited." Later, at lunch, Hecht and Paul realized it was a good idea, and "by the end of the afternoon[, they] had hammered out the nature and details of the form."

The form "made its first public appearance" in the June 1966 issue of Esquire (see pg. 109), where it was apparently an instant hit.

In 1967 (but © 1966), Hecht and John Hollander published the aforementioned book, entitled Jiggery-pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls^[5] (or just Jiggery-pokery for short), which remains almost the only book dedicated to the double-dactyl^[6]. A 1983 reprinting seems to add only a short epilogue at the end including three new poems^[7]. The poems within were presented "in historical order of their protagonists".

Through the early years, it seems that various magazines held many public competitions. These are probably findable, but mostly remain obscure. The authors "gradually abandoned their scholarly oversight", due to "the flood of examples which rushed in". The form "has become part of Nature".

In more modern times, perhaps because of its accessibly deceptive simplicity, the double-dactyl form enjoyed a period of popularity, peaking perhaps in the late 1990s / early 2000s. Significant online collections (primarily, those of Alex Chaffee and of Roger L. Robison) popularized double-dactyls in certain circles in the days of Geocities.

However, these collections were invariably incomplete and non-standardized. Worse, as websites go down (e.g. both of the above are down now), these poems are lost—sometimes forever. This is a travesty, since many double-dactyls are screamingly, wittily funny. Therefore, I am collecting every double-dactyl from all over the web as I can, scraping sites in archive.org and tracking down links and sources and authors. This collection (again, here) is the result.

Verse Form and Rules

The traditional rules are laid out in Jiggery-pokery (see pg. 27):

• Eight lines in two stanzas of four each.
• The first three lines of each stanza are in dactylic dimeter^[8].
• The fourth line of each stanza is a choriamb^[9], and those lines (lines four and eight in the poem) must rhyme with each other.
• The first line of the poem is repetitive nonsense ("Higgledy-piggledy" is commonest).
• The second line of the poem is a name, the subject of the poem.
• Somewhere in the poem, "preferably in the second stanza, and ideally in the [sixth] line, there must be at least one" line that consists of only a single word^[10] that has never been used before in any double-dactyl.

"[T]he beauty of the form consists chiefly of" the last requirement, that the six-syllable word be absolutely unique in the whole canon, because the finite supply of them implies that the form will have an "ultimate demise".

As more unofficial rules, "irresponsible freedom" with name epithets, adverbs formed from five-syllable adjectives, pronunciation ambiguities, and possibly also hyphenated six-syllable words^[11], are scorned.

For an additional challenge, I'll add that one can try rhyming the first two lines in each stanza also (you get a freebee on the first pair, because you can choose the nonsense appropriately).

In practice, many rules are broken by most authors. Nevertheless, double-dactyls lend themselves to a certain flavor which survives such transgressions.

The arranging of the poem is generally just two stanzas of four lines (a space in between) and no indentation^[12]. I have considered no intermediary space and indenting the bottom two lines of each stanza, but such modifications are not supported in the works of the form's creators, and so are not done here. In fact, with a few exceptions, the poems in the collection are all arranged according to the simple two-stanza format, whether they were presented that way or (rarely) not.

Notes and Status of the Collection

The collection is incomplete. Many poems in print media are obscure, and I'm looking for more of them. Most online sources are defunct, and archive.org has unfortunately not been able to save all of it. The majority of poems in the collection of Roger L. Robison were not saved, for example, and so are apparently irreversibly lost^[13]. I also have a backlog of sources that I am adding to the site. If you have more poems to add, please contact me!

A fair few poems were written under Latin pseudonyms and/or deal with subjects in classic literature and mythology. My understanding is that there was a site called "AncientWorlds", as well as an (older?) forum or mailing group called "TheTenthMuse", with some association with the Classics department at the University of Texas. Many of these poems come from these communities.

Many poems have been presented in other collections deliberately altered in some way, without marking. I consider this deeply objectionable and, in the interest of posterity, I have retained all typos and the like from the most authentic source, for posterity (except in a few truly egregious cases noted explicitly on those poems). Differences in other sources are noted. Some slight normalizations, such as turning ambiguously printed uppercase titles and authors into mixed-case according to the inferred preferred style, and replacing newlines in them with colons, have been done silently. I have carried out all this fidelification myself, mostly through tedious manual comparison, and regrettably errors are therefore probable: corrections are greatly welcomed!

I have added references, notes, and occasional links within the poems themselves, on account of their many allusions. (Even this process is not up to date!) Many of the topics are highly obscure, and any corrections or additions are welcome.

To understand the ones with made-up words, it is helpful to break it down into root words. "Ante-" is a common prefix, meaning "before". It forms the basis of the common^[14] word "antediluvian", meaning "before the mythical flood of the bible" and, by extension, great antiquity.

There are currently 439 poems in the collection, saved from (various certainties of) destruction. This is larger than the number that are actually visible, due to copyright. In every case, I have traced down and presented the latest (or in rare cases the least-broken) version provided by the author when possible, as well as catalogued and cross-referenced the multiple sources it may have appeared within and other poems alongside.

Submissions

Please contact me with any additional poems or sources you have found to be added to the collection! As mentioned, I do have a tremendous backlog of such sources, but reminding me or checking anyway is totally fine. High-effort, original^[15] compositions are welcomed too, as my time permits.

Copyright Issues

There are several basic cases.

In cases with clear and still-extant copyright—for example, Jiggery-Pokery Semicentennial—by default will not be published here until the copyright has lapsed, until it has entered the public domain another way, or until I receive written permission from the author. (If that's you, please consider doing so (e.g. by emailing me, contact info here), so that I may share your work more widely!)

In cases with clear and expired copyright—for example, the 1967 edition of Jiggery-pokery, as well as all works within it—I am presenting the work in its entirely, as is my legal right with any public domain work. (In this particular case, this book is copyright 1966^[16], and so is subject to the (now-obsolescent) 1909 policy of 28 years plus an option renewal of 28 years. This put it into the public domain no later than 2022. It scarcely matters—every poem (except for two) had already been elsewhere quoted publicly.)

In cases without clear copyright, I am inferring the distribution according to the author's selection. For example, works sent to double-dactyl compendium sites to be posted publicly are assumed to be intended to be shared (see the legal doctrine of "implied consent"). Authors of double-dactyls, as a breed, are wont to spew their doggerel proudly into the public domain, at times outright demanding their work be posted on public-facing websites, so this seems a safe assumption.

I do acknowledge the ambiguity, but, although I have tried in many cases, it is sometimes onerous or often simply impossible to contact the original authors, e.g. for not having emails or for outright dying. It is my interpretation that those poems were intended by their authors to be shared publicly and freely. Furthermore, in the interests of historical preservation, the lack of monetary value and market for a double-dactyl verse, and the nonprofit, educational nature of this collection, I hereby make a claim under the doctrine of Free Use to present these poems.

By the same token, I hereby grant rights to people to mirror my own poems under the default license for the site (see page footer), which is basically the attribution you should ethically give anyway.

Finally, copyright law is aggressively stupid^[17], and a greater law is the law of being nice. It is my intention to respect authors' wishes in all cases, and also my sincere belief that I have. If, however, you have authored a poem in this collection and, against my expectation, would like it removed, regardless of any copyright status, please contact me.

References and Notes