In Competition No. 3162 you were invited to submit double dactyls on stars of popular or classical music. Fans of ‘higgledy-piggledies’, as they are also known, should check out Jiggery Pokery, the terrific 1967 compendium of the form, edited by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander, who, in case anyone is wondering exactly what a double dactyl is, spells it out below:
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.
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