Double Dactyl: Poetic Forms
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the double dactyl, a light verse form invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal.
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the double dactyl, a light verse form invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal.
Double Dactyl Poems
The double dactyl form is a light verse form invented by poets Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal. It has the following guidelines:
- two quatrains
- each quatrain has three double-dactyl lines
- followed by a shorter dactyl-spondee pair
- the two spondees rhyme
- the first line is a nonsense phrase
- the second line is a proper or place name
- one other line (usually the sixth) uses a single double-dactylic word that has never been used before in any double dactyl [not sure how you can prove this, but...]
A couple notes on dactyls and spondees:
- one dactyl has a stress followed by two unstressed sounds; so, a double dactyl line does that twice
- a spondee is two syllables, both stressed
One final note: Some versions of the double dactyl replace the dactyl-spondee pair with a dactyl and stressed sound--so four syllables instead of five.
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Here’s my attempt at a double dactyl:
big game, by Robert Lee Brewer
Boopily, woopily--
Ann Arbor, Michigan,
fights for its football team
that never beats State!
Wolverines could use a
veterinarian
to help them win again
in the big ball game!
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
