Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls

work by Hecht and Hollander

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July 20, 2026

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"Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls" is a collection of poems in the double dactyl form, edited by poets Anthony Hecht and John Hollander. The double dactyl is a light-verse form consisting of eight lines, with each line containing two dactyls. The first line typically begins with a jingle like "Jiggery-pokery," and the second line is a name. The last lines of each stanza are truncated and rhyme, with one line in the second stanza being a single word. The term "jiggery-pokery" itself means underhanded manipulation or trickery.123

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double dactyls
According to the introduction to Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (1967), edited by the poets Anthony Hecht and John Hollander, this single word should appear “somewhere in the poem, though preferably in the second stanza, and ideally in the antepenultimate line,” though that ambivalence has, for some, hardened into…
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According to the introduction to Jiggery-Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls (1967), edited by the poets Anthony Hecht and John Hollander, this single word should appear “somewhere in the poem, though preferably in the second stanza, and ideally in the antepenultimate line,” though that ambivalence has, for some, hardened into…
Read More