Celebrating World Poetry Day 2022
Wonderful Wizardry of Poetry
An acrostic sonnet
“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
Wonderful wizardry of poetry Ordinary words become lyrical Rhyme, meter and form aren’t mandatory Lines may be counted, so too syllables. Dropped into text , used as an epigraph Poetry embellishes a dry speech Odes that inspire, make people cry and laugh Each person’s reaction will be unique. Teach poetry to kids in primary Reluctant readers will respond with joy Yes, it’s a proven learning strategy Develop language skills they can employ. Annual celebration of poetry! Yay! I’ve mastered acrostic sonnetry!
© Carolyn Hastings 2022
Look how much I’ve been able to say in precisely 140 syllables — 14 lines of ten, if you please! 😊
Imagine if I’d tried to say all this in an essay. One hundred and forty syllables in, and you’d be lucky to have finished the introductory paragraph!
That’s the wonder of poetry. You can say so much with so little.
Poets know that, and so too do poetry lovers, but it’s an advantage that is overlooked by many others, including folks here at Medium who only write longform.
This is my first-ever acrostic sonnet. We can thank* Patrick M. Ohana for that! Patrick didn’t exactly put me up to it, but when I tagged him into my first World Poetry Day sonnet, he then tagged me into his acrostic sonnet, O Goddess Athena. It made me think. It made me count my fingers.
W o r l d P o e t r y D a y Exactly 14 letters! It’s made to be an acrostic sonnet! 😅
I wrote this sonnet in the space of two hours. I wrote it in my head and on my fingers while I was going about my morning exercise regime and household chores. I fitted it in around checking my emails, listening to a podcast and reading the newspaper over breakfast. Try doing that with an essay!
Speaking of which, the * that you see above, just before Patrick’s name, that’s the marker to show 140 syllables in the ‘essay’ part of this post. See what I mean about getting more value from poetry. 😃
I hadn’t intended to write a second poem for Paper Poetry’s Week 9/World Poetry Day prompt, but since I have, I would like to take the opportunity now to give a shoutout to three poets whose fabulous responses to the prompt demonstrate the wonderful wizardry of words we call poetry.
Jim Dutton’s, The Reading -
A Rustic Mind (Manali Desai)’s, Poetry…Unchained -
Raine Lore’s, Somewhere Out There –
Talented poets like Jim, Manali and Raine, don’t always get the attention and credit they deserve but they, like all poets, prove that F. Scott Fitzgerald was right when he said, “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
There’s still time to submit to the prompt. Check the details here –
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