Poetry Challenge—Introducing the Acrostic Form 1: The Abecedarius

Sometimes I get stuck for ideas, and sometimes I just run out of steam. Today was one of those days. I had a post prepared about Robertson Davies version of the englyn, but I couldn’t wrap my head around writing it, so I’ve stowed that post for another day—and then I went looking for some help. I used ‘how to write poems’ as a search term, but it was too general, so I used ‘types of poems’ and took the first link I saw: http://www.kathimitchell.com/poemtypes.html.

Now, while I’m tempted to call this the Kathi Mitchell leg of the challenge, I won’t, but I will direct you to her site. It’s a good resource for teachers, poets-in-the-making, and writers who hit a bit of a block, but need to write a poem for whatever reason. So, go here, for a crash course in some poetry basics: http://www.kathimitchell.com/poemtypes.html.

And then I just had to go and dig a little further and I discovered that there were some different types of acrostic, including the one we’re featuring this week: the abecedarius. Here’s my first attempt at one of these:

A Lone Knight’s Anthem

Always alone

Been a long time, since I’ve been home.

Called, they say, but they are wrong.

Doomed, I say, to travel on.

Every step I know I must

Fight the battles to me thrust,

Give my blood, my sweat, my soul, now stained,

Help the fallen, even risk what ground I’ve gained.

I live a life that some might think,

Just a time of feast and drink.

Keeping them ignorant of the pain,

Lying behind each story gained,

Makes me ache to stay away,

Nearly cripples my heart to say,

“Oh, maybe, next year, I’ll come back and stay.”

Please, for my next victory, pray.

Queer the pitch with lightning stroke

Raise hell against the hellish folk.

Sing until you just might choke.

Try to fix that which was broke.

Unless the magic’s blended, done,

Vexations worse will surely come

Wizardry will not succeed alone.

Xenophobes a new tune strum.

Zeroing the danger allows for my return.

Why don’t you give it a try? Try writing at least one acrostic for each day of this week.

You can find out more about how to write acrostics from the following sites:

• http://www.kathimitchell.com/poemtypes.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrostic
• http://poetry.about.com/od/poeticforms/g/abecedarian.htm
• http://classiclit.about.com/od/literaryterms/g/aa_abcedarianpo.htm
• http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/acrostic/
• http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/acrosticterm.htm
• http://www.edu.pe.ca/stjean/playing%20with%20poetry/Hickey/acrostic.htm
• http://www.poetry4kids.com/blog/lessons/how-to-write-an-acrostic-poem
• http://poetry.about.com/od/poeticforms/g/abecedarian.htm