Acrostic

The acrostic poem is an easy one to describe. The initial letter of each of the first words in each line spells something. That something is called the acrostich. This form is often used to teach children. They make their first attempt to write poetry by writing something like their name, or their pet’s name perhaps, vertically and then use each of those letters to write a line.

F . . .

I . . .

D . . .

O . . .

While the form is often dismissed as children’s poetry, that’s not all it is. When writing as an adult, or for an adult audience, we can use poetic efforts to have the content of the poem coordinate with the word or phrase that is the acrostich. You can also vary the form by having the letters be the very last letter in each line. You can have the first letter of each line spell one word and the last letters spell another. These poems may be written in meter, such as iambic pentameter, and they may or not rhyme. The stanza length is often the word length, as “apple” would make a five-line stanza.

To write your own poem, choose a word or phrase that fits as a topic for a poem, one you would like to write. It can be a person’s name, a place name, even the title of another poem or a book. It can be a common phrase as long as it’s not really long. That could end up being a strained poem, one written just to fit the form, especially if there are a lot of letters that repeat.  

Edgar Allan Poe wrote an acrostic in response to the poem “Waiting” written by the poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon. The topic for both poems is love.

An Acrostic  Edgar Allan Poe

Elizabeth it is in vain you say

"Love not" — thou sayest it in so sweet a way:

In vain those words from thee or L.E.L.

Zantippe's talents had enforced so well:

Ah! if that language from thy heart arise,

Breath it less gently forth — and veil thine eyes.

Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried

To cure his love — was cured of all beside —

His follie — pride — and passion — for he died.

From Wikipedia we get this story, complete with the poem itself:

Rolfe Humphries received a lifelong ban from contributing to Poetry Magazine after he penned and attempted to publish "a poem containing a concealed scurrilous phrase aimed at a well-known person", namely Nicholas Murray Butler (recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, President of Columbia University). The poem, entitled "An ode for a Phi Beta Kappa affair", was in unrhymed iambic pentameter, contained one classical reference per line, and ran as follows:

Niobe's daughters yearn to the womb again,
Ionians bright and fair, to the chill stone;
Chaos in cry, Actaeon's angry pack,
Hounds of Molossus, shaggy wolves driven

Over Ampsanctus' vale and Pentheus' glade,
Laelaps and Ladon, Dromas, Canace,
As these in fury harry brake and hill
So the great dogs of evil bay the world.

Memory, Mother of Muses, be resigned
Until King Saturn comes to rule again!
Remember now no more the golden day
Remember now no more the fading gold,
Astraea fled, Proserpina in hell;
You searchers of the earth be reconciled!

Because, through all the blight of human woe,
Under Robigo's rust, and Clotho's shears,
The mind of man still keeps its argosies,
Lacedaemonian Helen wakes her tower,

Echo replies, and lamentation loud
Reverberates from Thrace to Delos Isle;
Itylus grieves, for whom the nightingale
Sweetly as ever tunes her Daulian strain.
And over Tenedos the flagship burns.

How shall men loiter when the great moon shines
Opaque upon the sail, and Argive seas
Rear like blue dolphins their cerulean curves?
Samos is fallen, Lesbos streams with fire,
Etna in rage, Canopus cold in hate,
Summon the Orphic bard to stranger dreams.

And so for us who raise Athene's torch.
Sufficient to her message in this hour:
Sons of Columbia, awake, arise!

 

Here is a clever acrostic written by Jeanne Marie Beaumont (one of my mentors at the Stonecoast MFA program). It appeared in The Crafty Poet (Terrapin Books) and is written after the Robert Frost poem “After Apple-Picking”. Note how she does the acrostic using the title.

After

All long labors, whether for hunger, for duty, for

Pleasure, or none of the above, one day wrap up.

Put down the itinerant’s beaten pouch, pluck no fruit further;

Linger over the melancholy taste of last on the tongue.

Even a switchblade wit can’t sever another stem.

 

Plenty is a relative measure – if less than paradise,

It’s more than enough. The prolific orchard will of course

Continue, other soles trod ladders into the heady

Kingdom of weighted boughs. Insatiable, you might even say

Incorrigible (as though mumbling in winter sleep), the way they can’t

Not keep coming back, grasping, tugging, lifting down those

Globes that swell and blush to be handled so.

 

and one of my own . . . An earlier version of this is in my book Breathe Here (North Country Press). The title is made up with my parents’ names.

 

Helen Frances Healey Daniel Joseph O’Leary

 

How could it be that

Even though I was not ready I still had to

Lose you, as if it were my fault

Even though that’s not what happened.

No one would think that, would they?

 

For long? That I lost my mother?

Remember, though, that’s how they said it

Always. “She lost her mother.”

Not - her mother left her by dying.

Children should probably have a mother

Even though some are better than others and

Some may be no good at all.

 

Heaven’s no place for a mother

Especially when her children are young

After they’ve grown, it may be some consolation

Later, when her daughters are mothers, but

Early on, while you’re still young,

You shouldn’t have to lose your mother.

 

Days and days on end with just a father

And one who isn’t close in a good way

Nor proud of you for the things you do

In school or anywhere at all

Eventually lead to tedium,

Loss of

 

Joy

Or

Satisfaction

Even

Pride,

Hope,

 

Or, well,

’nough said about that already.

Less is truly more sometimes.

Every truth has a back story

As simple as it may seem

Rarely do you tell it all as you tell

Your own story.