Light Verse Central

A home for light verse and a haven for those that write it. Is free verse too free for you? Do you prefer the structure of haiku and sonnets or the humor of limericks and double dactyls? Do rhyming couplets and children's . . .

Light Verse Central

A home for light verse and a haven for those that write it. Is free verse too free for you? Do you prefer the structure of haiku and sonnets or the humor of limericks and double dactyls? Do rhyming couplets and children's verse make your heart go pitter-pat? Well then, post it all here!

Just remember that any free verse here must be light and or humorous or should be posted elsewhere, such as at For the Love of Free Verse .

What's a double dactyl? Glad you asked! A dactyl is a poetic foot of the form -- (ON-off-off). For example: matador, realize, cereal, limerick, etc. A double dactyl can therefore mean simply two dactyls in a row.

A double dactyl is also a verse form, also known as "higgledy piggledy," invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal in 1961. Like a limerick, it has a rigid structure and is usually humorous, but the double dactyl is considerably more rigid and difficult to write. There must be two stanzas, each comprising three lines of dactylic dimeter followed by a line with a dactyl and a single accent. The two stanzas have to rhyme on their last line. The first line of the first stanza is repetitive nonsense. The second line of the first stanza is the subject of the poem, a proper noun (usually someone's name). Note that this name must itself be double-dactylic. There is also a requirement for at least one line of the second stanza to be entirely one double dactyl word, for example "va-le-dic-tor-i-an".