// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did the double amphibrach say? I'm stressed on both sides.

The double amphibrach is a variation of the double dactyl, similar to the McWhirtle but with stricter formal requirements. Meter and lineation are consistently amphibrachic (da DA da) rather than dactylic (DA da da), and the shortened fourth and eighth lines rhyme. In narrative sequences, the requirements that the first line be nonsense syllables and second line be a proper name are sometimes waived, but the sixth line requires a single diamphibrachic word (e.g. discriminatory, hallucinogenic, personification).

Jan D. Hodge in The Bard Double-Dactyled and Other Odd Pieces includes several pieces in this stanza form. His version of “Humpty Dumpty” begins:

As Humpty was sitting

upon a partition,

he misplaced his balance

and suffered a fall.

A sodden, unsightly

reorganization

of yolk and albumen

appeared by the wall.

Here is the seventh stanza of his rendering of Hamlet:

Laertes returns to

avenge his dead father

and finds his dear sister

half out of her mind,

her life in all senses

deteriorating:

her father’s been killed and

her lover’s unkind.

and his Taming of the Shrew concludes:

The husbands’ last wager

provides us a further

and fitting reversal

confirming this view;

the contest makes clear the

identification

we’d always suspected—

Bianca’s the shrew.