Chastise Complain Confront: Triple-Acrostic Exercise

Chastise Complain Confront

CacophoniC story arC

Hiss and boO and make a mark. O

Anatomic Mocking’s fuN

Slapstick Pleases everyone. IF

Taunting Leaves a nasty scaR

It’s coarse for Adolescent par. O

Save us from Indignant shuN

Engage iNstead in kick pass punT

..

Since 2007 I have made acrostic poetry my own private playground, but it isn’t all fun and games. At times it’s a lot like trying to sculpt with a sledgehammer, with a shoehorn for a chisel. I have written a handful of these with exact rhyme and meter and (using Excel spreadsheet software) exact number of characters per line. Those were at best stilted and at worst excruciatingly bad as far as cohorence of content went.

My megalomanic goal is to become the best acrostic poet of all time. In furtherance of that goal I periodically create acrostic puzzles of great difficulty and then try to solve them. This time I took three theme-related eight-letter words starting with a C and searched for the trochaic-tetrameter lines that would as nearly possibly rhyme in couplets. To make it work I had to start the next line on the previous line.

I flatter myself to think that thousands of exercises like these have made me a hell of a poet, in a novelty-item sort of way. If not–well, it passes the time, and it’s better than Solitaire.