Literary Terms
Acrostic
An
acrostic is a literary device in which the first letter of every verse
consecutively forms a word or message.
An acrostic is mostly applied in poetry, but can also be used in prose
or word puzzle. This word or alphabet is often connected to the theme of the
poem. It is deliberately inserted to make readers discover the layered message.
It also acts as a mnemonic device that can quicken the pace of the memorization
process. Acrostic poetry can be written in any meter, or free verse form, with
or without a rhyme scheme. However, the most common types of acrostic poems are
those in which the initial letter of each line forms a word, and is often
capitalized.
Acrostic
is used as a tool to add a new dimension to the texts. The writers, very
artistically, transform a simple text into a word puzzle by allowing the
audience to interpret the hidden message of the text. Also, it enables the
writers to project information comically. However, it is not something comic.
The writers purposefully choose this strategy to convey their thoughts, ideas,
and messages. Also, the acrostic style makes poems easy to remember. This
conventional style of poetry is widely exercised in children literature to make
learning fun for them.
Types of Acrostic Poems
Telestich:
These are the poems in which the last letters of each line spell a word or
message.
Mesostich:
The poems in which the middle of words or verses forms a word or a message.
Double
Acrostic: The poem in which words are spelled by both the first
and last letters of each line in a way that one word is read vertically down
the left side of the text, and another word is read vertically down the right
side of the text.
Abecedarian:
Acrostic in which alphabets are spelled instead of words. Chaucer’s poem “La
Priere de Nostre Dame” is a good example of an abecedarian acrostic.
Non-Standard:
Non-standard acrostics do not use first or last letters to spell out a word.
Instead, they emphasize letters in different places within the poem.
Examples:
1.
Lewis Carroll’s “Acrostic”
Little
maidens, when you look
On
this little story-book,
Reading
with attentive eye
Its
enticing history,
Never
think that hours of play
Are
your only HOLIDAY,
And
that in a HOUSE of joy
Lessons
serve but to annoy:
If in
any HOUSE you find
Children
of a gentle mind,
Each
the others pleasing ever—
Each
the others vexing never—
Daily
work and pastime daily
In
their order taking gaily—
Then
be very sure that they
Have
a life of HOLIDAY.
Lewis
Carroll wrote this poem for three children on Christmas. The poem illustrates
the lovely sense of domestic life during the holidays. The poet seems to
explain why we should take a break out of busy lives to enjoy these times of
the holidays. However, it is the most common type of acrostic, as the initial
letters of the poem spell out the names of three sisters: Lorina, Alice, and
Edith.
2.
Nabokov’s “The Vane Sisters”
“I
could isolate, consciously, little.
Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded,
yielding nothing tangible. Her
inept acrostics, maudlin evasions,
theopathies—every recollection formed
ripples of mysterious meaning.
Everything seemed yellowly blurred,
illusive, lost.”
This
is an example of acrostic formed in prose.
It is a story about a professor who believes that codes and concealed
meanings wrapped in acrostics evoke the thrill of discovery. Therefore, the
first letters of each word in the final paragraph of the text spells out a
phrase, “Icicles by Cynthia; Meter from me, Sybil.” These words are the
keywords to interpret the story’s mysterious plot.
3.
An Acrostic by 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.
In
these lines, Edgar Alan Poe talks about love by using the name, ELIZABETH as a
word. The L. E. L in the third line may refer to an English poet, Letitia
Elizabeth London, who is famous for signing her works with these initials. The
poem speaks about the love and merry-making of a couple. Poe has used acrostic
style to illustrate how most of the people find hope in love.
4.
Chaucer's "La Priere de Nostre
Dame"
Commonly
referred to as "Chaucer's ABC's," this poem is an example of the
sub-genre of acrostic known as abecedarian poetry, in which the first letters
of each stanza spell the alphabet in sequence.
ALMIGHTY
and all-merciable Queen,
To
whom all this world fleeth for succour...
Bounty
so fix'd hath in thy heart his tent,
That
well I wot thou wilt my succour be...
Comfort
is none, but in you, Lady dear!
For
lo! my sin and my confusion...
5.
Blake's "London"
This
poem by William Blake puts a special emphasis on the sounds of London's
cityscape, such as the cries of the chimneysweeps and the sighs of the
soldiers. In the third stanza, the initial letters of each line form an
acrostic that spells the word "HEAR," which underscores the speaker's
fixation on the sounds in his environment. This is an example of acrostic being
used in just one stanza of a poem—the remainder of the poem does not contain
acrostics.
How
the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every
blackning Church appalls,
And
the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs
in blood down Palace walls
6.
Cage's "Overpopulation and
Art"
John
Cage was a hugely influential experimental composer and poet who, toward the
end of his life, became interested in writing acrostic poems in which the key
letters were placed in the middles of lines instead of at the beginnings—a form
known as mesostich poetry. The following excerpt is the beginning of one of the
last poems Cage wrote in his lifetime, "Overpopulation and Art." The
long mesostich poem, written in free verse, spells out the words of the title,
"overpopulation and art," twenty times (the number of letters in the
title). The excerpt below shows just one of the twenty cycles of the poem.
abOut
1948 or 50 the number of people
liVing
all
at oncE
equaled
the numbeR who had ever lived at any
time all added together
the Present
as far as numbers
gO
became
equal to the Past
we
are now in the fUture
it
is something eLse
hAs
iT
doubled
has It
quadrupled
all
we nOw
kNow
for sure is
the
deAd
are
iN the
minority
they
are outnumbereD by us who're living
whAt
does this do to
ouR
way
of communicaTing...
Acrostic
poems may be written in meter or in free verse, with or without rhyme.
Roses
are red,
Oranges
yummy,
Sugar's
a sweet,
Elixir
in my tummy.
Decoding Acrostics
The
level of difficulty in decoding the hidden message of an acrostic varies
widely, and that difficulty depends on how carefully the author has hidden it
or, conversely, how deliberately he or she has revealed it. In many cases, it's
easy to recognize the word being spelled in the acrostic because the important
letters are capitalized or bolded and they fall at the beginning of each line.
In other cases, the author may have intended for the acrostic to be harder to
solve, leading them to insert the important letters more subtly by embedding
them somewhere other than the first word of each line or leaving the letters
lower-case. Put another way: an acrostic may be a show, in which the author
wants you to see it at once, or a puzzle that the author is content to have some
people find and other's not.
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