Manderson Snickafreed & Double Dactyls

Apples and Fairy Tales

(DA da da DA da da)

Photo by Amy LV

Students - today's poems are double dactyls, a funny (and tricky!) form invented by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal in 1961. This form has many rules which you can find online or in one of my favorite new books, IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND, by Steve Kowit. Here are the rules, as described in my book:

A double dactyl has 2 quatrains.
The first three lines of each quatrain are dactyls (DA da da DA da da, example is Hickory Dickory).
The final line of each stanza is a single dactyl and a single accented syllable (DA da da DA).
The first line is a nonsense phrase which must rhyme with the second line.
The second line must be a proper name or noun.
The second line of the second stanza must be a single word (a six syllable word with stresses on syllables one and 4).
The last line of each stanza must rhyme.


The Poetry Foundation and Wikipedia indicate that some purists hold to the Hecht's and Pascal's original rule that the sixth line of a double dactyl must be a word that has never before been used in line six a double dactyl. Many do not.  Mine do not, I'm sure!

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On Saturday night, I found myself thumbing through this book and delighted in reading the double dactyls therein. That night, I wrote Manderson Danderson. Then, on Sunday, I was worried that I might not be able to do it again...so I tried and wrote Hickafreed Snickafreed.

Here are some double dactyls from a 2009 Poetry Stretch with Tricia over at The Miss Rumphius Effect.  This would be a brave challenge to try as a class. No need to finish the poem all at once either!  Simply begin it on a sheet of chart paper (I found it easiest to begin with line 2 or line 6) and then everyone can just keep thinking about it over a couple of weeks.  You might even wish to make a list of dactyls on a separate chart: CEN-ti-pede, UN-der-wear, SU-per-star....

Below you can see the drafts for my two double dactyls.  You'll see how in some places I marked the syllables and stresses to be sure that they were solid.

Double Dactyl Draft

by Amy LV

Another Double Dactyl Draft

by Amy LV

Yet Another Double Dactyl Draft 

by Amy LV

(My husband just asked how many of these I plan to write.  He said that he wonders if I am becoming obsessed.  Maybe so, maybe so.)

For a link to Hans Christian Andersen's THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL, click here.  For the story of Johnny Appleseed, click here.  And for information about Dav Pilkey's CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS books, click here.

Over at Sharing Our Notebooks (my other blog) Ruth Ayres offers a look into her notebooks and questioning process.  Thank you, Ruth!

HAVE a good MONday now!

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today - Word List Poems

Canoeing at Sprucelands

Photo by Amy LV

I am still at Sprucelands riding camp with our children, and this week found canoeing words sloshing through my brain.  Walking up and down the hills, watching children giggle-paddle around the lake, I began writing in my head.

In Zen and the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury explains how listing words, especially nouns, sometimes helps him to generate story plots.  This week's poem is a list of words, dropped one-at-a-time into a poem.

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 Students - favorite poems stay with us.  And one of my favorites is Lee Bennett Hopkins' poem "Good Books Good Times" from his anthology with the same title.

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Lee begins his poem :

Good books.

Good times.

Good stories.

Good rhymes.

He ends with these lines:

Good stories.
Good rhymes.
Good books.

Good times.

Can you see how Lee's last four lines are the same as his first four, only switched?  When I began writing my poem for today, I did not know how it would turn out.  I only knew one thing:  I wanted the first and last two lines to switch.  I knew this because I have been carrying a favorite poem around in my head for a while.

You might want to try this - write a list of words and then move them around.  Play with rhyme.  If you can't find rhymes you like, try some different words.  For me, such an exercise feels like skipping stones across a lake.  Some jump easily and sound good, and some sink to the bottom and don't stay in the poem  Either way, it's fun to throw both stones and words around.  

Do you have a favorite poem in your head?

Libby is hosting today's Poetry Friday buffet over at A Year of Literacy Coaching.  May you find some new and old favorites on the menu.

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