Acrostic Poetry

You might remember doing an Acrostic poem in grade school, or maybe not until high school. It’s a fun little form that anyone can do.

The name comes from the Greek words akros, meaning “at the end,” and stichos, meaning “line.” Basically, you take a word or short phrase, and craft your poem using the letters in your word/phrase consecutively for the first letter of each line. When you’re finished, your word will appear vertically on the left hand side of your poem.

Here’s the one I wrote when I was in Grade 8:

Frost upon the window pane
Eerie winds along the streets
Blue-grey skies across the lane
Rosey red ‘most frozen cheeks
Underneath the snowy skies
And as thermometers go down
Returning once again, surprise!
Yes, you’re right, it’s Jack Frost’s frown.

Acrostic verse was once written on leaves used in prophecies, arranged so the initial letters formed a word. They can be found in Greek and Latin, and it was popular in Medieval literature, usually to highlight the name of the poet, or their patron. Sometimes they were used in a prayer to a particular saint.

You are limited only by the length of the word or phrase you are highlighting. There is no syllable count to worry about. You can write on any subject you wish. There is no rhyme scheme, unless you’re crazy enough to want one. If you want to make your Acrostic poem even more challenging, you can try writing a Telestich – where both the first and the last letters of each line spell a word or phrase. Do not expect to see one of these double Acrostics here. ;-)

Acrostic verse can be a fun introduction to poetry. Even well-known poets have been known to write an Acrostic poem or two: Edgar Allan Poe, Lewis Carroll, and John Keats, to name but a few.

I found it interesting that despite my claim you’d have to be crazy to write one that rhymed, my first example rhymes, because all of my poetry rhymed back then. And I guess that’s still my default, because I just naturally started to rhyme my example. Go figure, eh? And I’m cheating a bit with my example. The poetry group I belong to has monthly “poemwork” and this month our assignment was to write an Acrostic poem using the word FIREWORKS. So here it is.


Fireworks

Fireworks behind my eyes –
Isn’t interesting I see them still?
Reality fades from darkened skies,
Ensuing silence is so very shrill
Without the booming lows and highs.
Obligations we’ve yet to fulfill
Remain lost in their disguise –
Kaleidoscope dreams distill,
Spilling down like a cosmic prize.