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.
Well, copy-and-pasting "All work and no play," etc., a thousand times, would be a bit silly, wouldn't it?
ReplyDeleteVery clever.
ReplyDeleteI'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?
Welcome back, Ned! We've missed you!
ReplyDeleteMy 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.
Dangerous Type
ReplyDeleteClickety-clackity
Theodore Kaczynski
Sat in his cabin
Composing a tome.
Lacking the tools,
Technologically,
Explosive opinion
Drove his point home.
...errr, should have been: Sociologically
ReplyDeleteBlimey!!!
Mark it 8, Dude.
ReplyDelete