The joint editors explain the form in their introduction to Jiggery-Pokery: The form itself is composed of two quatrains, of which the last line of the first rhymes with the last line of the second. All the lines except the rhyming ones, which are truncated, are composed of two dactylic feet. The first line of the poem must be a double dactylic nonsense line, like “Higgledy-piggledy,” or “Pocketa-pocketa”. The second line must be a double dactylic name. And then, preferably in the second stanza, there must be at least one double dactylic line which is one word long. (Foreign languages may be employed.) But, and the beauty of the form consists chiefly in this, once such a double dactylic word has successfully been employed in this verse form, it may never be used again.
John Hollander, in his book Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse (Yale University Press, 1981), put the requirements in verse:
Starting with nonsense words
(“Higgledy-piggledy”),
Then comes a name
(Making line number two);
Somewhere along in the
Terminal quatrain, a
Didaktyliaios*
Word, and we’re through
*Greek for “composed of two dactyls”
While Hecht and Hollander argued, in the introduction to Jiggery-Pokery, that any six-syllable word (a double-dactylic word), once used in one double dactyl, can never be used in a different one, and believed that, thereby, the form had a built-in obsolescence, time has proved them mistaken. Wikipedia maintains that only hardcore double-dactyl purists still hold to this requirement. Robert Schechter has provided an abundant word list of polysyllabic double dactyl words and many practitioners of the form have used neologisms and foreign terms. And this ridiculous form continues to inspire traditional poets, such as John Fuller who has compiled a complete collection entitled Double Dactyls (Shoestring Press, 2017), and self-published poet, Dean Blehert, who has made more than two dozen of his double dactyls available online.
Among relatively younger poets Alex Steelsmith and Chris O’Carroll continue to pursue the art of the double dactyl as their work appears regularly in Light and Snakeskin. Alex Steelsmith has been a regular contributor to Light’s Poems of the Week: I’m attracted to double dactyls partly because they provide a form that their co-inventor John Hollander described as ‘dismally difficult.’ In my early efforts, I had my hands full simply meeting all the requirements and making any sense at all. As I began to feel more at ease writing them, I made it my goal to add an ’extra‘ little challenge—some bonus joke, play on words, or double entendre—to their other requirements. His attraction to a concluding pun in his double dactyls is often both intriguing and irritating in equal measure, much like Shakespeare’s attraction to woeful puns. Chris O’Carroll has also devoted much of his comic talents to the double dactyl. One complete section of his recent collection Abracadabratude (Kelsay Books, 2021) is all double dactyls. The skill with which he approaches the form is evident below.
Fifty years after Atheneum published Jiggery-Pokery, Waywiser published Jiggery-Pokery Semicentennial (2018), a new compendium edited by Dan Groves and Greg Williamson. Dedicated to the memories of Hecht and Hollander, and with an introduction by Willard Spiegelman, it comes complete with a cover by the celebrated graphic designer Milton Glaser who designed the cover for and also illustrated the original Hecht-Hollander volume. Chris Wallace-Crabbe, who also contributed to Hecht and Hollander’s anthology, makes a further appearance in this selection. Also included, among others, are
Annie Finch, Andrew Hudgins, A.M. Juster, X.J. Kennedy, Charles Martin, J.D. McClatchy and Brad Leithauser whose double dactyl, entitled “Double Ductile” adorns the cover and is reprinted below.
Double Dactyls by Anthony Hecht
PARADISE LOST BOOK 5
AN EPITOME
Higgledy-piggledy
Archangel Rafael,
Speaking of Satan’s re-
Bellion from God:
“Chap was decidedly
Turgiversational,
Given to lewdness and
Rodomontade.”
***
FROM THE GROVE PRESS
Higgledy-piggledy
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Wroth at Bostonian,
Cowardly hints,
Wrote an unprintable
Epithalamion
Based on a volume of
Japanese prints.
***
FIRMNESS
Higgledy-piggledy
Mme. de Maintenon
Shouted, “Up yours!” when ap-
Proached for the rent,
And, in her anger, pro-
Ceeded to demonstrate,
Iconographically,
Just what she meant.
****
THE RUSSIAN SOUL
Higgledy-piggledy
Rodya Raskalnikov
Belted two dames with a
Broad-bladed ax.
“I am the wictim(*) of
“Misericordia,
“Beaten,” said he,”By re-
“Legion and sax.”
Author’s Note: (*) Dialectologists will no doubt be offended by this, as no Russian-speaker would ever so distort the voiced labial fricative, “V;” however, it must be remembered that the dialect here spoken is Standard Middle Hollywood Central European.
***
HANDICAP
Higgledy-piggledy
Judas Iscariot,
Cloven of palate, of
Voice insecure,
Mumbler and lisper, was
Hypocoristically
Known to his buddies as
“Jude, the Obscure.”
***
These double dactyls first appeared in Jiggery-Pokery (Atheneum, 1967).
Double Dactyls by John Hollander
HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS
Higgledy-piggledy,
Benjamin Harrison,
Twenty-third President,
Was, and, as such,
Served between Clevelands, and
Save for this trivial
Idiosyncrasy,
Didn’t do much.
***
TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING
Higgledy-piggledy,
President Jefferson
Gave up the ghost on the
Fourth of July.
So did John Adams, which
Shows that such patriots
Propagandistically
Know how to die.
***
NO FOUNDATION
Higgledy-piggledy
John Simon Guggenheim,
Honored wherever the
Muses collect,
Save in the studies (like
Mine) which have suffered his
Unjustifiable,
Shocking neglect.
***
THE RUSSIAN SOUL #2
Higgledy-piggledy,
Anna Karenina
Went off her feed and just
Couldn’t relax.
Then, quite ignoring the
Unsuitability,
Threw in the sponge and was
Scraped off the tracks.
***
PARENTS’ FAULT
Higgledy-piggledy,
Ditters von Dittersdorf
Hoped that his symphonies
Really would please;
Caconomasia
Ruined him, though, with a
Name that resembled some
Nervous disease.
***
These double dactyls first appeared in Jiggery-Pokery (Atheneum, 1967).
Double Dactyls by Christopher Wallace-Crabbe
APPEARANCE AND REALITY
Higgledy-piggledy
Homo Neanderthal
Coming from crowded caves
Unto the scene
Viewed all the countryside
Anthropomorphically—
Rather surrealist,
That must have been.
***
YIN AND YANG
Higgledy-piggledy
Herbert of Cherbury
Had a kid brother who
Took to the cloth
They were (to speak of them
UnMetaphysically)
One a dark butterfly,
One a bright moth.
***
IMPRESSIONISM
Fiddlesky diddlesky
Vladimir Nabokov
Pared his perceptions down
Beautifully fine,
Firmly insisting on
UnDostoevskian
Flickers of color and
Tremors of line.
***
ANGUISH
Higgledy-piggledy
Christopher Wallace-Crabbe
Tripped over dactyls on
Tentative toes
O, how he hankered for
Hendecasyllables,
Double sestinas or
Senecan prose!
***
THE UR-GUGGENHEIM
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!
***
These double dactyls first appeared in Jiggery-Pokery (Atheneum, 1967).
Double Dactyls By James Merrill
ABOVE ALL THAT?
Higgledy-piggledly
Mary of Magdela
Said to the dolorous
Mother of God:
“Parthenogenesis
I for one left to the
Simple amoeba or
Gasteropod.”
***
NEO-CLASSIC
Higgledy-piggledy
Jacqueline Kennedy,
Went back to Hydra and
Found it a mess —
Neon lights, discotheques …
“Landlord, what’s happening?”
“Avθρωτηοτήκαμε
Go home, U.S.”
Editors’ Note: *or, roughly, “We have become human beings!”
***
These double dactyls first appeared in Jiggery-Pokery (Atheneum, 1967).
Double Dactyls by Paul Pascal
VALE
Pocketa pocketa
Bard of ill omen, I
Hereby renounce the
Poetical life.
I’ve been forgetting my
Altertumswissenschaft
Losing my sleep and neg-
Lecting my wife.
***
TACT
“Patty cake, patty cake,
Marcus Antonius,
What do you think of the
African queen?”
“Gubernatorial
Duties require my
Presence in Egypt. Ya
Know what I mean?”
***
These double dactyls first appeared in Jiggery-Pokery (Atheneum, 1967).
Double Dactyls by John Fuller
Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake,
Engelbert Humperdinck
Didn’t sing pop songs or
Pump Heavy Metal.
Though such a fact may seem
Contra-indicative,
He wrote an opera:
Hänsel und Gretel.
***
Oompa-pah, oompa-pah,
Sergei Prokofiev
Battered the keyboard
To ivory bits.
What do we think of such
Irregularity?
Musically speaking, it
Sounds like the Blitz.
***
Obladih-obladah,
Theodore Roosevelt
Thought of himself as a
Hunter with flair.
Fame is so fickle and
Unsatisfactory:
Now he is known as a
Nursery bear.
***
Hippety-hoppy, T.
W. Harrison
Called himself “Tony” like
“Thom” and like “Ted.”
Surely a must when mid-
Twentieth-century
Poets disliked seeming
Much too well-bred?
***
These double dactyls appear in John Fuller’s Double Dactyls
Double Dactyls by Alex Steelsmith
Wailing unfailingly,
Robert A. Zimmerman
filled up the airways from
Cork to Carmel,
sounding to some like his
nasopharyngeal
airways were frequently
filled up as well.
First published in Snakeskin Poetry
***
Poodily doodily,
Arthur F. Schopenhauer
named his dog Atman—a
touch of arcane
hypocoristical
anthropomorphism;
Atman, unselfishly,
didn’t complain.
***
Apparel and A Parallel
“[A] Women’s Soccer League game with a crowd of nearly 33,000 suffered a delayed kickoff…
because the teams had matching socks.”
—AP
Soccery, sockery,
fans in the stadium
wanted a contest, but
there was a catch;
though the two rivals were
hypercompetitive,
no one expected so
perfect a match.
***
Rock Star
“The John F. Kennedy Museum on Cape Cod is showcasing a rocking chair…
favored by the late president.”
—AP News
Rockabye, rockabye,
Kennedy’s rocking chair
went on exhibit and
visitors flocked.
Even incredulous
neoconservatives
had to acknowledge that
Kennedy rocked.
First published in Light (Poems of the week)
***
Rhinocerescue
“First IVF rhino pregnancy could save northern white rhinos from the brink of extinction.”
—USA Today
Higgledy-pigmenty,
Ceratotherium
isn’t, despite how we
label it, white.
Though the white rhino is
hardly albino, its
genecological
outlook is bright.
***
A Huge Suckcess
“The ‘world’s largest’ vacuum to suck climate pollution out of the air just opened… a technology designed to…strip out the carbon using chemicals [and] transport the carbon underground where it will be naturally transformed… [in a] sequestration process.”
—CNN
Merrily, merrily,
modern technology
comes to the rescue like
never before,
thanks to a supersized
carbon-sequestering
vacuum that nature will
never abhor.
Double Dactyls by Dean Blehert
Tippeca Nippeca,
William H. Harrison
(“H” is for Henry) was
Born to be bold,
Won bloody battles, was
President briefly, then
Unpresidentially
Died of a cold.
***
Huffity Puffity,
Theodore Roosevelt
Labored to breathe through his
Tight-chested wheeze;
Prayed that a vigorous
Rough-riding life would prove
Anti-asthmatical;
Photo-ed, said “CHEESE!”
Author’s Note: Teddy suffered from Asthma and fought back, leading a vigorous, out-doorsy life. He has a big toothy smile in most of his photos, unusual at the time, when public figures usually made serious faces at cameras.
***
Howshouldee Bowshouldee,
John, Earl of Rochester,
Worn out with wenching, just
Had to unwind,
Polished his verses un-
Til they reflected him,
Epigrammatically
Skewering mankind.
***
Plunkity Monkity,
Lead-Guitar Harrison
Yearning for sacredness,
Eastward did roam,
Dodging the clutch of fans
Beatlemaniacal,
Knowing deep down that there’s
No place like Om.
***
Dean Blehert’s compilation of his own double dactyls.
A selection of tailgaters by Dean Blehert is available on the Briefpoems Tailgater page.
Double Dactyls by Chris O’Carroll
Follywood-sprawlywood,
Francis Ford Coppola
Found gangster epics a
Lucrative line,
Then came to grief with his
Neo-Conradian
Vietnam acid trip.
Now he makes wine.
First published in Snakeskin Poetry
***
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.
First published in The Spectator
***
Riyadh Reformer
Dynasty-phantasy,
Saudi Arabia
Frowns on corruption, we
Now come to learn.
This ain’t your grandfather’s
Kleptotheocracy.
This Prince has money and
Cousins to burn.
First published in Light (Poems of the week)
***
Monticello Updates the Exhibits
Liberty-flibberty,
Hemings and Jefferson
Made an arrangement in
Black, white, and gray.
Master/slave congress proved
Philoprogenitive.
Also consensual?
Harder to say.
First published in Light (Poems of the week)
***
WINGING IT
Albatross, ovenbird,
John Keats’s nightingale,
Skylark, a sparrow in
Nemerov’s zoo,
Ornithological
Poetry murmurates,
Raven to darkling thrush,
Swan to cuckoo.
First published in Asses of Parnassus
***
UNFROZEN
Scientists have discovered a worm that managed to stretch its short life expectancy — by tens of thousands of years. A tiny roundworm was revived after it was frozen in Siberian permafrost 46,000 years ago, when Neanderthals still walked the Earth. The worm, a previously unknown species of nematode, survived after entering a dormant state known as cryptobiosis, during which the animal doesn’t eat and lacks a metabolism.
-National Public Radio
Permafrost-worm-a-frost,
Stone Age life bears the cost;
Nematodes chill, put lost
Vitals on hold,
Cryptobiotically
Saving themselves to be
Thawed at twice 23
Thousand years old.
First published in Snakeskin Poetry. (June, 2024)
Assorted Double Dactyls
Double Ductile
Wittily whiskery
Anthony Hollander(™)
Fifty some years ago per-
fected a form—
Seriocomically
Polysyllabical—
Which quite unlikelily
Took us by storm.
Brad Leithauser
***
Von Hofmannsthal
Higgledy-Piggledy
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Wrote hushed libretti for
Noisy Herr Strauss,
Radiant fables that
Incomprehensibly
Lifted the spirit and
Brought down the house.
J. D. McClatchy
***
Higgledy-piggledy
Ludwig van Beethoven
bored by requests for some
music to hum,
finally answered with
oversimplicity,
“Here’s my Fifth Symphony:
duh-duh-duh DUM!”
E. William Seaman
***
Emily Dickinson
Higgledy-piggledy
Emily Dickenson
Liked to use dashes
Instead of full stops.
Nowadays, faced with such
Idiosyncrasy,
Critics and editors
Send for the cops.
Wendy Cope
***
Emily Dickinson
Yellow rose, yellow rose,
Emily Dickinson
lived in seclusion, was
never a wife;
wrote of her garden most
anthropocentrically,
talking with God, Satan,
Death, all her life.
Robin Helweg-Larsen
First published in Asses of Parnassus
***
Rome/New Rome
Bippetty boppetty
Gracchus (Tiberius)
Tried to reform Rome and
Ended up dead.
Same with his brother; and
Coincidentally
JFK, RFK,
Pumped full of lead.
Implausible Deniability
Blustery, flustery,
President Tweetybird
thinks his election went
fine, on the whole.
Counterintelligence
isn’t his enemy.
Now we have learned that it’s
simply his goal.
Susan McLean
First published in Light (Poems of the week)
***
Higgledy piggledy,
Bacon, lord Chancellor.
Negligent, fell for the
Paltrier vice.
Bribery toppled him,
Bronchopneumonia
Finished him, testing some
Poultry on ice.
Ian Lancashire
Chuffity-puffity
Anna Karennina
Suffered unduly from
Chauvinist males
Setting her up as an
Author-itarian
Warning to ladies who
Go off the rails.
Peter Womack
***
The Godfather
Bippety Boppety
Francis Ford Coppola
Bucked crazy Paramount
Shooting Part I:
Held out for Marlon, who
Characteristically
Clobbered the Moguls and
Answered to none.
Terese Coe
***
Engelbert Humperdinck
Doesn’t deserve his own
Verse in this contest but
He has a name
Perfectly suited to
Double-dactylity.
Therefore I grant him this
Moment of fame.
Robert Schechter
***
Higgledy piggledy,
Ludwig van Beethoven,
if he could glimpse what our
world has become,
likely would find a new
applicability
for his immortal phrase:
dum dum dum DUM!
Robert Schechter
***
Jiggery Pokery!
Hechtus Antonius
Made a ridiculous
Fistful of rules
Raising two fingers to
Metrical specialists –
Ultraconventional
Farcical fools!
Ann Drysdale
***
It’s been a blast
Agedly sagedly
David F Attenborough
said we were doomed
with a very sad face.
We dragged our knuckles round
uncomprehendingly,
wrapped him in plastic
and launched him to space.
Nina Parmenter
***
Sharp Tongue
Lexicon, liaison,
Antidogmatical
Anna Grammatical
Held off the horde.
Even fanatical
Men of virility
Met with futility—
Words were her sword.
A. M. Juster
First published in Light (Winter, 2017)
More brief poems by A. M. Juster are available on the Around the Scuttlebutt page.
Hoofitty-toofitty
Frederick Austerlitz
gave the appearance of
dancing on air,
Thinking his name to be
sesquipedalian,
hurriedly changed it to
plain Fred Astaire.
Andy Jackson
First published by Otwituarist
***
Bordery bardery,
Romeo Montague,
Star-crossed romantic? Well,
So it was seen.
Shocking, today, that he’d
Unproblematically
Have an affair with a
Girl of thirteen.
Joe Williams
First published by Otwituarist
***
Code-breaker, mode-breaker,
Baroness Trumpington,
Socialite peeress who
Gave not a hoot.
Youtube went wild when the
Octogenerian
Gave her now famous two-
Fingered salute.
Sian Lang
First published by Otwituarist
***
‘Nana-boots ‘nana-boots
Sir Billy Connolly
Starts as a welder then
Takes to the boards
Rollicking bollicking
Leotardistical
Ribald performances
Loved by the hordes.
Alice Meynell
First published by Otwituarist
***
higgeldos-piggeldos
writer, thucydides
hints that the spartans might
kinda just suck
thus in the future they’re
quite unimpressively
archeologically
boring as f-ck!
Bella Rudd
***
Loamily-Pomily
Ted Hughes and Sylvia
Found that love’s heaven could
Turn into hell.
Ted went philandering
Mythopoetically;
Sylvia crumpled. Things
Didn’t end well.
George Simmers
***
Wonderful thunderful
Ludwig van Beethoven
How you thrilled Alex with
Quartet and Fugue!
So it was sad when a
Psycholobotomy
Made you no longer his
Musical droog.
George Simmers
These two poems by George Simmers were first published in Snakeskin Poetry
***
Lyrically-miracly
Gilbert and Sullivan
two for the price of one
packed the Savoy;
bubbling with tunes and rhymes
phantasmagorical,
glorious plotting that’s
stuff to enjoy.
D.A. Prince
First published in Snakeskin Poetry
***
Donald Dabble Dactyl #1
Piggledy-Wiggledy
Ronald McDonald
cursed Donald Trump,
his least favorite clown:
“Why should I try to be
funny as Donald? He
gets all the laughs
claiming upside is down!”
Michael R. Burch
More brief poems by Michael R. Burch are available on the Pearls page.
LINKS
Jiggery-pokery : a compendium of double dactyls (On the Internet Archive site).
Jiggery-Pokery Semicentenennial: The Waywiser Press page with excerpts.
Double Dactyls selected by Alex Chaffee with an extensive set of links to double dactyl sites.
Over three dozen double dactyls on Robin Pemantle’s Higgledy Piggledy Data Base.
Cody Walker on the double dactyl (with examples) in the Kenyon Review.
D. A. Prince reviews John Fuller’s collection of thirty-eight Double Dactyls.
A festival of double dactyls on the Snakeskin Poetry site (Issue 277; October 2020.)
The Wikipedia page on the double dactyl.
Dean Blehert’s compilation of his own double dactyls.
Robert Schechter’s word list of double dactyl six-syllable words.
Otwituarist posts double dactyls regularly on its Twitter (X) site.
Otwituarist collects its double dactyls on a WordPress site.
Bella Rudd posts double dactyls regularly on her Twitter (X) site.
Brief Poems 
Pingback: Higgledy-piggledy – The Art of the Double Dactyl – The Gloss
The HyperTexts is currently taking submissions for a variation of the double dactyl called the “dabble dactyl.” The guidelines are surprisingly lax:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Double%20Dactyls.htm
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