Sins of Commission Higgledy-Piggledy José Barroso

Higgledy-piggledy
José Barroso so
stuffy starch collarly
stiff upper lip,

said 'for the life of me
no proto Irano
plutonium energy
setting up ship! '

robi03_1936_robi03_0000 robi03_1936_DACTYL_0000

Metrical Variation in the Double Dactyl Stanza
http: //www.barefootmuse.com/archives/issue7/hodge.htm< /a>

The double dactyl stanza, created in the 1960s by Paul Pascal and Anthony Hecht,1 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

Richard III - Off with his Head!

Richard III (in which 'Off with his head! ' serves as a refrain) :

Tewksbury witnessed his
slaughter of Edward, whose
widow thereafter he
took to his bed.

Anyone faulting such
insensitivity
should have known better; 'twas
off with his head.

He had his brother and
then his two nephews all
killed in the Tower, or
so it is said.

Hastings and Stanley, who
ideologically
balked at his crowning, heard
'Off with his head! '

poem by Jonathan Robin
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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