Sunday, August 17, 2008

Sing, O Muse!

Not an easy business, this pooching-out-a-book dodge. Some days at the salt-mines go well enough, but others leave me feeling emotions not dissimilar to those no doubt felt by the writer fella played by Jack Nicholson in "The Shining."

So as not to wind up chasing my family about the Overlook Hotel with firemens' hardware and discussing the affairs of the day with spectral bartenders, I find other, less violent diversions. Say, poetry.

The double-dactyl form has always interested me, and I thought I'd try my hand at it....
Heeeeere's Johnny!

Clickety-clackity

Jack at the Overlook

Sat at a table

Composing a lay.


'Twas dullness itself, this

Poeticality;

Jack's been, of lately,

All work and no play.

6 comments:

Neddie said...

Well, copy-and-pasting "All work and no play," etc., a thousand times, would be a bit silly, wouldn't it?

Anonymous said...

Very clever.

I've been experimenting with different rhyming schemes, noting how they fit the flow of music. iambic tetrameter creates a wonderful, succinct flow in 4/4, but anapestic tetrameter seems to end up sounding like Dr. Seuss.

Wasn't familiar with this double-dactyl form though, and it might be worth experimenting with. You've obviously mastered it. As such, do you think it fits a 6/8 rhythm with the backbeat on the 4?

Anonymous said...

Welcome back, Ned! We've missed you!

My college chum Jim F. composed a double dactyl 40 years ago- using the name of an early psychoanalyst- which was so fiendishly clever that I never even attempted one:

Higgledy-piggledy,
Harry Stack Sullivan's
Patient had visions of
Birds in his bed,

Till the good Doctor tried
Pharmacotherapy,
Thereby dissolving the
Rocs in his head.

Anonymous said...

Dangerous Type

Clickety-clackity
Theodore Kaczynski
Sat in his cabin
Composing a tome.

Lacking the tools,
Technologically,
Explosive opinion
Drove his point home.

Anonymous said...

...errr, should have been: Sociologically

Blimey!!!

Anonymous said...

Mark it 8, Dude.