ICAD xlv: Check Raise &Call

For more than ten years Acrostic Poetry has been both a tool and a toy to me. Within its limitations there are unending possibilities.

Today I took a minimalist approach. What’s the smallest couplet? Two words. Is it possible to create a triple acrostic with each line a two-word couplet? Let’s see what happens when we try.

Canned Reprim&. Hierarchic Antarctic. Elysia Indonesia. Correctional Sectional. K-Rational Encyclical.

Is the use of the ampersand cheating? No, especially not nowadays. Number/symbol shorthand has been around 4ever.

Is this Poetry? Of course it is. Ten words will take an agile mind gliding into new associations–“canned reprimand” is relevant in this age of e-mail blasts, for instance–and both the heaven of Elysia and the cold hell of Antarctica are referenced. And what is an Encyclical but an all-encompassing discussion? Let’s dole it out in K-Rations to make it palatable to the soldiers of knowledge. (That’s a K-rationalization if ever there was one.)

Above all, the value of this little exploration is its newness. Certainly there are better triple-acrosticized couplets waiting to be invented (discovered?)–there may even be a QUADRUPLE-acrosticized beast, with more apt associations leading to greater insights regarding the sentient condition. I invite sentient beings, human and otherwise, to create them or to find them. Just give ol’ Johnny Acrostiseed here an acknowledging nod if you do, please. 🙂