Terribly Clever Double Dactyl

Because I don’t have enough else to do, and to break my ten-year poetry-writing block, I’m auditing a poetry course this semester with the inimitable Michael Ann Courtney. She has us playing with all sorts of forms. Last week, one of the (many) assignments was a “terribly clever double dactyl.”

Besides constraints of rhyme and meter, the doubt dactyl requires an opening line of repetitive nonsense and a second line that consists of someone’s name. One of the lines in the second stanza must be a single double-dactylic word. The whole thing should have some snooty literary or philosophical allusions.

Mine, naturally, dealt with the Martyrs Mirror.

I’ll publish it here, since it certainly doesn’t deserve a broader audience.

Toothsomely, gruesomely

Thieleman J. van Braght

drafted his indices:

martyr parades.

Gougings on drownings on

tongue screws on flames for their

Mennohistorical

last escapades.