In Competition No. 3026 you were invited to submit topical double dactyls.
The double dactyl was dreamed up in 1951 by the poet Anthony Hecht and the classical scholar Paul Pascal. My well-thumbed copy of Jiggery-Pokery, a wonderful 1967 compendium of the form edited by Hecht and the poet John Hollander, reveals with pride that Auden (to whom the book is dedicated) used the form ‘thrice’ for the choruses in his Aesopian playlets Moralities.
Double dactyls always go down well, and this comp elicited an entertaining parade of double dactylic notables — and pursuits egomaniacal, unoligarchical, prosecutorial, heterosexual, philoprogenitive…
The winners earn £15 each.
Foggily-froggily
Michel B. Barnier,
Consummate bureaucrat,
Raises the price,
Crushing the will of our
Flummoxed and browbeaten
Plenipotentiaries
Held in his vice.
Hugh King
Higgledy piggledy
Pastuso Paddington
gets himself banged up in
Pentonville gaol.
Even the lairiest
anarctophiliac
joins in the whip-round for
Paddington’s bail.
Nick MacKinnon
Mopily-ropily,
Manchester’s Morrissey
Goes back to crooning, his
Novel a fail.
Hoping his audience,
Hari-kiristically,
Still want to hear a man
Tunelessly wail.
Adrian Fry
Biffety-boffety
Anthony Joshua
Heavyweight champion
Top of the pile;
Talks of his legacy
Hyperbolistically;
Nemesis listens and
Smiles a slow smile.
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