Abecedarian: Poetic Forms
Poetic Form Fridays are made to share various poetic forms. This week, we look at the abecedarian poem, which uses the alphabet.
For this week's poetic form, we're going to cover the abecedarian, a fun form that uses the alphabet to structure the poem. Many poets begin each line with a letter of the alphabet in order (see my example below), making it an alphabet acrostic poem. However, there are other options available to poets.
For instance, a poet could begin each stanza with a different letter in order instead of each stanza. Or try going through the alphabet backwards. Poets could even do both by trying to begin lines in ascending order and end lines in descending order. So many possibilities!
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Play with poetic forms!
Poetic forms are fun poetic games, and this digital guide collects more than 100 poetic forms, including more established poetic forms (like sestinas and sonnets) and newer invented forms (like golden shovels and fibs).
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Here's my attempt at an abecedarian:
"A to Zebra," by Robert Lee Brewer
A zebra walks into a bar,
but the bar is made of chocolate
candy, and the zebra herself
dines like a child in sweet dreams
ecstatic her incredibly
fantastic fortune leads her to
good luck (the kind made of chocolate!)
having never had chocolate bars
in her childhood surrounded by
jackalopes and elephants and
kangaroos and aliens and
llamas and short, introverted
miners who drank under a green
neon sign more than a dozen
ounces of rootbeer after they
partied their nights away in their
quest for sugary drinks, because
rootbeer reminded them all of
simpler times with a nice princess
that made them wash their hands and their
undergarments before dinner
voicing concern for their lack of
wellness habits and she revealed
x-rays that showed they were really
yahoos raised by caribou the
zebra knew from a former zoo.
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
