A talented fellow

Readily steadily
Tony the lecturer
signs up for operas
all over town

Tenor by register 
smiley by character
polyglottology
wins him the crown!

Ms Mizzi

Busily buzzily 
Stephanie playfully 
ogled by chorusmen
enters the scene 

She likes her german and 
her Lucky Saint she’s our
uberintelligent
opera queen!

In response to my opera friend Tony Valsamidis, who sent me these instructions…

In traditional meter, the dactyl foot consists of a strong accent followed by two weaker stresses. Its counterpart in music is the waltz measure in 3-quarter time–you know, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, etc. It’s not often used contemporary poetry, with the exception of the genre termed “light verse.” In fact, it’s the basis of a comic verseform called the “double dactyl,” which was invented collaboratively by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal. Wickedly funny examples were collected in a 1967 volume titled =Jiggery-Pokery= compiled by Hecht and John Hollander. The rules: take a real or fictional personage whose name consists of two dactyls as your subject. Write two stanzas of four lines each, the first three consisting of two dactylic feet, the fourth line, one dactyl followed by one strongly stressed syllable. The fourth lines rhyme with each other, but no other rhymes are required. The poem’s first line consists of two semi-rhyming or rhyming dactyls, like “higgledy-piggledy,” “wishily-washily,” or “hippety-hoppety”. The second stanza must include one line that consists of a single word, in the rhythm of two dactyls.  Not easy to manage all this, but fun when it clicks.