unpredictablebijou
Peril!
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2007
- Posts
- 5,507
Here's an ongoing challenge, a truly fun one I've always wanted to present to this group.
This form is one I discovered through John Bellairs, one of my favorite authors, and our family has played with it for years. The strictest version of this is called a double dactyl,. Here are two examples from Bellairs:
Higgeldy-piggeldy
Saint Athanasius
Riffled through volumes
in unseemly haste
Trying to find out if
(hagiographically)
John of Jerusalem
Liked almond paste.
Higgeldy-piggeldy
John Cantacuzene
Swaddled in Byzantine
Pearl-seeded robes
Put out the eyes of his
Iconophanical
Prelate, for piercing his
Priestly ear-lobes.
Here are two more examples of my own:
Higgeldy-piggledy
Ferd the Recalcitrant
Buttoned his hair shirt with
Flagellant shame
That in composing his
Autobiography
He had forgotten his
Third middle name.
Higgeldy-piggeldy
Archduke Bassarian
Bathed in an ullage
Of parboiled rice
In preparation for
Peripatetically
Searching his mansion
For heretic mice.
The meter and rhyme scheme is pretty obvious, but for you overly academic types who like this sort of precise terminology, the meter is the standard pandemic catheter, with a truncated polyglottal breviary in the 3rd and 7th lines and an optional elysian spondiform between lines 3-4 and 7-8.
Basic rules:
The second line must be a name.
The fourth and eighth lines must rhyme.
The sixth line must be a single six-syllable word.
Obey the rhythm, or it won't be as funny.
have fun, you poets!
bj
This form is one I discovered through John Bellairs, one of my favorite authors, and our family has played with it for years. The strictest version of this is called a double dactyl,. Here are two examples from Bellairs:
Higgeldy-piggeldy
Saint Athanasius
Riffled through volumes
in unseemly haste
Trying to find out if
(hagiographically)
John of Jerusalem
Liked almond paste.
Higgeldy-piggeldy
John Cantacuzene
Swaddled in Byzantine
Pearl-seeded robes
Put out the eyes of his
Iconophanical
Prelate, for piercing his
Priestly ear-lobes.
Here are two more examples of my own:
Higgeldy-piggledy
Ferd the Recalcitrant
Buttoned his hair shirt with
Flagellant shame
That in composing his
Autobiography
He had forgotten his
Third middle name.
Higgeldy-piggeldy
Archduke Bassarian
Bathed in an ullage
Of parboiled rice
In preparation for
Peripatetically
Searching his mansion
For heretic mice.
The meter and rhyme scheme is pretty obvious, but for you overly academic types who like this sort of precise terminology, the meter is the standard pandemic catheter, with a truncated polyglottal breviary in the 3rd and 7th lines and an optional elysian spondiform between lines 3-4 and 7-8.
Basic rules:
The second line must be a name.
The fourth and eighth lines must rhyme.
The sixth line must be a single six-syllable word.
Obey the rhythm, or it won't be as funny.
have fun, you poets!
bj
