Jiggery-Pokery ─ A Semicentennial

Poetry. It is 50 years since Atheneum published Anthony Hecht and John Hollander's Jiggery-Pokery, a compendium of verses known as double dactyls. The double dactyl was the invention of Hecht and Paul Pascal, and is was aptly described on the jacket of Jiggery-Pokery as a devilish amalgam of rhyme, meter, name-dropping and pure nonsense. It caught on, too, just as the limerick and the clerihew had caught on, and has been testing the mettle of many a poet--and not a few aspiring poets--ever since. To celebrate Jiggery-Pokery`s half-century, Waywiser is delighted to be publishing JIGGERY-POKERY SEMICENTENNIAL, a wholly new compendium expertly edited by Dan Groves and Greg Williamson. The volume is dedicated to the memories of Hecht and Hollander, and it comes with a splendid introduction by Willard Spiegelman, Hughes Professor emeritus at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and a regular contributor to the Leisure & Arts pages of The Wall Street Journal. Spiegelman's most recent books are Senior Moments: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (2016) and If You See Something, Say Something: A Writer Looks at Art (2016). The volume also comes complete with a cover by the celebrated graphic designer Milton Glaser, a singularly appropriate choice since Glaser (still going strong at the age of 88) designed the cover for and also illustrated the original Hecht-Hollander volume.

"Think of 'light verse' not as mere triviality but as a special form of illumination. The double dactyl makes its own claims, and does its own work. It has grown over time. Take a look at JIGGERY-POKERY SEMICENTENNIAL: you will find God's plenty, wittily miniaturized. The new double dactyls collected by Messrs. Groves and Williamson prove individually and collectively that having once 'learned' the rules of the form, a poet may produce a learned work, a poem both 'simple, sensuous, and passionate' (Milton's desideratum) and playful, witty, even intellectual . The poets in these pages have extended the boundaries of Hecht and Hollander's original definitions, and of their anthology of half a century ago. One hopes that the old masters would have approved. Contained in this slim volume, readers will find poems that are didactic, secular, witty, and ironic, as well as illuminating: often sensuous and passionate, perhaps even simple. Their illumination comes, in fact, from their didactic wit." --from Willard Spiegelman's introduction