Higgledy-piggledy is metrically identical to Emily Dickinson. So is idiosyncracy.

Wendy Cope used these sonic correspondences niftily in her poem “Emily Dickinson“:

Higgledy-piggledy

Emily Dickinson

Liked to use dashes

Instead of full stops.

Nowadays, faced with such

Idiosyncrasy,

Critics and editors

Send for the cops.

One charming and effective technique in the poem is how the first stanza identifies E.D. with higgledy-piggledy-ness and then graduates her, in the second stanza to idiosyncracy.

This mirrors how E.D. was received historically: at first intolerably unconventional, and decades later undeniably artistic. It’s also how most of us individual readers experience her poems: first as a “What the *&^% is this alphabet soup?” And months (or years) later as a “This soup is pretty #$%^ good–never had anything quite like it!”

Well-written, Ms. Cope.