Perhaps you’ve done this. You take the first letter of each line to make a poem or just a name or phrase. When you read it vertically, you see the poem. Many of us have indulged in this fun pastime. We take the name of a friend and write a wish for them.
For instance, “Here’s wishing you, ‘Kind Reliable Intelligent Shy Noble Awesome’, a very happy Saturday.” You see what I mean? This is an example of acrostic poetry.
Of course, I am reminded of two of Salman Rushdie’s books.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories dedicated to older son Zafar, bears this dedication- ‘Z embla, Zenda, Xanadu:/ A ll our dream-worlds may come true/ F airy lands are fearsome too/A s I wander far from view/ R ead, and bring me home to you.’
The dedication is a gentle and loving way to tell the child that his father would always be there for him.
Endearing is the word to describe Rushdie’s message in Luka and the Fire of Life that bears this dedication : ‘M agic lands lie all around/I nside, outside, underground/ L ooking-glass worlds still abound/ A ll their tales this truth reveal:/ N aught but love makes magic real.’ The book is for Rushdie’s younger son, Milan. Times were better and love would make it more sublime.
Talking of love, I know I may seem biased but no one writes acrostic poems quite like Vikram Seth does. His poem for literary agent Giles Gordon is moving. ‘Gone though you have, I heard your voice today/ I tried to make out what the words might mean/ Like something seen half-clearly on a screen:/ Each savoured reference, each laughing bark/ Sage comment, bad pun, indiscreet remark./ Gone since you have, grief too in time will go/ Or share space with old joy; it must be so/ Rest then in peace, but spare us some elation/ Death cannot put down every conversation/ Over and out, as you once used to say? /Not on your life. You're on this line to stay.’
Repeating this form of verse at a literary festival there, Seth honoured the Sri Lankan island of Taprobane thus : ‘The sunset hour/an arrack sour/ pours peace on pain,/ringed by the lights/of a full moon night,/books wax and wane,/as from afar/no unkind star/eyes Taprobane.’
You will see a familiar name spelt out in Lewis Carroll’s A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky, and in Canicular Acrostic, the lines reveal not just a name but a season too. Read An Acrostic by Edgar Allan Poe for a dose of classic poetry. To complicate things, try the double acrostic or multiple acrostics.
In the course of my research, I came across an interesting article. During an investigation, the police intercepted a message that read, ‘I have achieved it, and endless memories make me upset.’ These lines, written in Chinese, made no sense to them – or-sadly – to the two women accomplices it was sent to.
Till someone figured out that the text message was an acrostic poem. The first characters of each line combined to read, “Pick me up at Magou.”
The poem led to a large number of arrests and the collapse of a drug pin. All in a day’s work for poetry.
Dr Srividya is a poet. Read her work at www.rumwrapt.blogspot.com
