The Acrosticist

As an artistic soul, my preferred mode of exposition, or “channel” (if you will) is that of the humble acrostic poem – delicate in composition and nuanced in form, yet thunderously compelling in its pithy shards of wisdom and its striking majuscules. “Was ever mankind graced with nobler format?!” I often find myself crying out unto the night, almost instinctively, shuddering to hear only the jangled echoes of my audacity in response.

When composing my acrostics, I am often overwhelmed by a powerful affinity with poets of the Far East writing in the Tategaki tradition. Like me, they do not succumb to the trappings of a script written in horizontal banality  – rather, we employ the transcendental vertical script, through which the page blossoms, and offers forth a panoply of visions, dreams and music. Occasionally I am moved to pity those who continue to adhere unthinkingly to the left-right convention, unconscious of their own enslavement.

And yet, I should practice a gross deception were I to suggest that this left-right persuasion were without merit. Indeed, the genius of the acrostic form lies in the poetic synergies generated by its embrace of scriptorial poly-directionality, as anyone who has ever read an acrostic poem will tell you. In exactly those terms.

Some see in the literary edifice of the acrostic a fortress of limitations, but in it I see only potential. Every initial chimes with its own poetry – my task is but to clear my head of thoughts, and to listen. Thus I consider myself to be, above all, an interpreter first, and will humbly accept the mantle of poet second.

I shall leave you with a work demonstrating the raw vehemence of which the acrostic poem is capable. In the following composition, drawn from my late 90s “Grundschule” collection, I take as my subject the humble dog; time-old companion of man – bound to man’s fate – complicit in his suffering! Imbuing the very essence of “dog” is a network of aspirations, dependences and contradictions, and yet through the prism of the acrostic, the canine soul is rendered vividly, with fidelity and with flair.

Dogs

Old

Good

Scruffy

To find out how The Acrosticist can work wonders for your company, enquire by email at theacrosticist@antipodeanloveletters.blogspot.com with the subject title "Make me rich in word and coin".