Higgledy-piggledy…
Double dactylic: a
Verse structure off’ring more
Syllabic space.
Themes are expanding with
Project longstanding as
Concepts, biographies
Gather apace.
This is the third part of an ongoing, likely-to-be-five-part project, expanding on a presentation from 2022 to provide an “asynchronous” essay series on the same topic. This specific post will discuss how I have used a modification of the double-dactyl form in some science poetry work.
This is a poem type that tends to be less familiar than the limerick, so I’ve included a new, non-Twitter example around which to build this essay. (The title of this post is adapted from a phrase related to chemical bond formation; here, it alludes to the rewarding interconnections I’ve seen in the fields of chemistry and poetry.)
“Higgledy-piggledy… /
Double dactylic: a /
Verse structure off’ring more /
Syllabic space.“
The double dactyl form is newer than the limerick form, and its provenance is more definitive. Paul Pascal, Anthony Hecht, and John Hollander developed the extensive rules for this poem, memorably nicknamed the “higgledy piggledy,” in the mid-twentieth century.
In this eight-line poem, the meter is dactylic throughout [DAH-dah-dah (e.g., “PO-et-ry”)], with a rhyme between lines 4 and 8. To be a true double dactyl, the first line should consist of nonsense words, the second of a referenced name of some variety, and one line should itself be a single unique six-syllable, double-dactylic word.
My own poems rarely meet all of those precise requirements! However, compared to the five lines of the limerick, the double dactyl offers more “syllabic space” with which to work, and so for many topics, it has been slightly more flexible.
“Themes are expanding with /
Project longstanding as /
Concepts, biographies /
Gather apace.”
In my experience, this form has held particular promise for explaining a concept in a memorable way or telling a scientist’s story.
***
My chemistry limerick project ended on 30 April 2019, so I faced the predictable question of “now what?” on 1 May 2019. I was aware it wasn’t sustainable to keep the effort going indefinitely, and I deliberately paused for a while.
Later that summer, as I’ve described elsewhere on this site, I found a Periodic Poetry writing contest that inspired a double-dactyl-esque poem about Dmitri Mendeleev, commemorating the 150th anniversary of his publishing the precursor to the modern Periodic Table of the Elements. The contest and recognition were both rewarding at a challenging time of the year, inspiring me to keep trying with this sort of creative work. In the years since, I have continued to post poems regularly for National Poetry Month (April) and National Chemistry Week (October), with the occasional effort in between, and I have regularly expanded those poems into essays on this website as well.
Interestingly, in negotiating scientific jargon, I notice that certain anapestic or dactylic feet will automatically emerge, a fact that often discerns between the limerick or double-dactyl form. A salute to the “stoichiometrical” or the “macromolecular,” for instance, would automatically require the latter! I also greatly enjoy highlighting the stories of scientists, and I’ve seen that full names often fit well into this dactylic format: Percy L. Julian, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Alice Augusta Ball, to name a few.
As I’ve experimented with light-verse forms throughout the years, I have become increasingly interested in their potential for effectively communicating introductory science stories and principles, as the homepage here notes.
Chemphasis 