[John Whitworth]

Competition: Double dactyl

LUCY VICKERY
SATURDAY, 10TH MARCH 2012

In Competition No. 2737 you were invited to submit a double dactyl.
This popular and, judging by the size of the entry, extraordinarily compulsive poetic parlour game was invented in the Sixties by the celebrated poets Anthony Hecht and John Hollander and is described in the blurb of Jiggery-Pokery, their magnificent compendium of the form, as a ‘devilish amalgam of rhyme, meter, name-dropping and pure nonsense’.
The challenge generated a quirky parade of double-dactylic notables. I especially liked Bill Greenwell’s double dactyl as it might have been written by that mangler of meter William McGonagall; commendations, too, to Mike Morrison, Luci Thomas, Christopher Greening, Roger Munson, Alannah Blake and Penelope Mackie.
The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £15 each.

Dimity-dashity
Emily Dickinson
Danced around Death like the
Flame round a wick.

Though she is known for her
Eremiticity
She had a sharpness that
Cut to the quick.
W.J. Webster

Beggarbucks megabucks
Chancellor Angela
Tells the Athenians
‘Tighten your belts,

‘Cherish das kapital
Supplementational,
Practise austerity
Dringlich — or else!’
Ray Kelley

Poshily-pishily,
Catherine Middleton,
Duchess of Cambridge, is
Urban well-bred.

Pity she isn’t so
Nonagricultural:
Could have been Duchess of
Ambridge instead.
Bill Greenwell

Happily-slappily
Helena Rubinstein
Marketed creams with a
Lanolin base.

Millions of women paid
Superabundantly
Just to smear scented sheep’s
Grease on their face.
Basil Ransome-Davies

Airily-fairily
Benedict Cumberbatch
Played Sherlock Holmes in a
Postmodern vein.

Conan Doyle rip-offs done
Anachronistically
Give me no pleasure, just
Do in my brain.
G.M Davis

Gallic’ly-phallic’ly
Madame de Maintenon
mistress of Louis, the
Sun King of France

Said to her paramour,
Immédiatement!
Embrassez-moi while vous
avez the chance.
Martin Parker

Critchety crotchety
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Deaf as a post but he
Didn’t succumb;

Startled the world with his
Musicological
Symphonic novelty —
Da-da-da Dum!
Gerard Benson

Bellyful-tellyful,
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Dines in a realm beyond
Chop and two veg,

Craves novel challenges
Gastrointestinal —
Roadkill, placenta, and
Bits of the hedge.
Chris O’Carroll

Harryspex Pottifex
Headmaster Dumbledore
Challenges evil with
Magical might.

Harrying enemies,
Paronomastical
Albus is someone who’s
Whiter than white.
Frank McDonald

Ginicus-tonicus,
Titus Andronicus
Ate his own progeny
Baked in a pie.

Cursing the chef, he was
Uncomplimentary:
‘Far too much salt, and the
Pastry was dry.’
Brian Allgar

[Chris O'Carroll]

John, I don't think "superior taste" is the issue. I think you and I should form a support group for authors of losing Titus Andronicus poems. At our meetings, we'll sit around grumbling about how the winner didn't even get the facts of the play straight. Titus doesn't eat his own children. He kills his enemy's children and tricks her into eating them. (It's only slightly less horrible when you know that the children in question are adults.)

[John Whitworth]

Quite true, Chris. The guy doesn't know the play and neither alas, does the divine Lucy. I shoulda been a contender. I shoulda won. You, after all, did.

[Bill Greenwell]

It won't get seen unless I put it here, but here is my near-miss double-dactyl

Diggerily-doggerely,
William McGonagall
Wrote about bridges collapsing and other disasters
On specific dates of the year.

He was so poor at scansion that it’s
Incontrovertible
He’d never have written a double-hollander with any success
Or so I fear.

[John Whitworth]

Bill, I'm so glad you put that up. I was wondering how it went. Brilliant. Take fifteen quid of monopoly money.

[Chris O'Carroll]

Thank you, Bill, for satisfying the curiosity that Lucy piqued with her teasing mention of your McGonagall entry. This double dactyl is surely destined to be remember’d for a very long time.

[FOsen]

Hilarious, Bill, and congratulations to the winners. If it's any consolation, John, I haven't felt so slighted since my sex scene from Metamorphosis. I'm just going to post the one for which I had high hopes, and go back to being my reasonably stoic self:

Ratatat-tatatat,
Leo DiCaprio
Played Edgar Hoover but
Didn’t impress.

J. Edgar’s men have sworn,
Uncategorically,
Hoover would not have worn
Pearls with that dress.

[Susan d.S.]

I believe there is also a rule that L6 cannot repeat any existing double dactyl. One time use only. I'm sure I've seen "Paronomastical" before. How on earth would one check that? Need a world database of published double dactyls.

[Brendan Beary]

And I don't mean for this to sound like sour grapes, nor to criticize the particular writers in question (esp. since I don't even know if they're members), but are "Chancellor Angela" and "Headmaster Dumbledore" really permissible form? I thought L2 had to be a true double-dactylic name; if you can start subbing in titles, honorifics & the like, it strikes me as watering down the overall strength of the pedigree. Or is that just me?

[Chris O'Carroll]

Fundamentalists who regard Hecht & Hollander's Jiggery-Pokery as scripture will indeed insist that once a six-syllable word has been used, it is ever thereafter out of play. In my view, if ever a rule was made to be broken, that one was.

I also take a loose constructionist approach to the question of what counts as a name. I've done "Headmaster Dumbledore" and "Pope John XXIII" double dactyls. John Whitworth has done an "Emperor Julian." Martin Parker has done a "Rodgers and Hammerstein." I'd be surprised to learn that nobody had ever done a "Gilbert and Sullivan." And there's no shortage of appellations -- "Philip of Macedon," "William the Conqueror" -- that could be challenged as not being actual names in the strictest sense, even though that's what everybody calls the people in question.