What Are Acrostic Poems?

                                                        Photo by Aneta Pawlik on Unsplash

August is a month full of my family's birthdays. My Dad's and Daughter's Birthdays are 2 days apart. My sister in-law's is the day before my Dad's, And my brother in-law has the same day as my Dad's! I also have friends with August birthdays. 

But what am I talking about birthdays for when I should be talking about acrostic poems from the title of this blog? Well, acrostic poems happen to make great birthday presents. In fact, one was the greatest gift I ever got. It wasn't my birthday, just a random day, and a friend of mine in high-school said she had something for me after class. It was an acrostic poem of my name saying nice things about me. I write acrostic poems all the time, mainly because they are easy for me. So what is an acrostic poem?

                                                   Photo by Matthias Heyde on Unsplash

An acrostic poem is a poem that spells out a word going down. So when looked at, the first letter of each line of a poem spells out a word. Let's use Birthday as an example:

Bright

Inspiring

Ritual

That

Happens to

Dare the

Awesomeness of

Years

                                                        Photo by Angèle Kamp on Unsplash

For me, these types of poems are fairly easy to do, and do quickly. I actually once used this form of poetry to make money at a craft fair. I got some nice paper, and wrote out poems for people, charging a small amount (it was a dollar then, but over 15 years has passed and I would charge more now). I asked a person their name or a name of a person they wanted to make a gift for. Then I would ask about that person and what their likes were. Then I would write out that person's name and write a poem about them, and it's all thanks to my friend that gave me that poem in high school. I often think of a letter and see how many words I can come up with that letter. When I seriously want to write the words, I will write them down on a piece of paper. This can also help me when I have writer's block. It's fun for me. I hope it's fun for some of you too. At least I hope it's fun for you to read if you don't write!

Part of the reason I am telling you about acrostic poems is because "Season's of Sensation" will have many of them in it. It's not the whole book, but it is a big part of the book. Every month has an acrostic poem of it's name. I've got that part of the book done. That was an automatic 12 poems. I also wrote a sonnet for every season as well as 3 haiku's for each season. (As well as acrostics for each season too, automatically giving me another 4 poems). Then there is a lot of free verse in "Seasons of Sensation". I'm going to sign off now, I need to work more on my book than I need to write my blog!

 

Happy New Years and Resolutions!

Photo By Myriam Zilles

I don't know if I got any work done on my new book this year or not. I do know I wrote at least one poem this year that is not going in the book. I think I might make working on Seasons of Sensation my New Year's Resolution, as much as I dislike New Year's Resolutions. I think our society is way too obsessed with goal setting. A little bit is okay, but it's gone too far. Everything in moderation!

Photo by Matt Hoffman

Setting this goal though, helps me work on other goals too, like prioritizing my mental health and accomplishing things I can be proud of. What better way to do that then poetry? I also just got diagnosed with a nervous system disorder (functional neurological disorder or FND) and mindfulness is supposed to help. I think mindfulness and poetry relate big time! In fact, in my classes, I would sometimes have everyone do a mindful exercise and then write a poem. Writing a book might be a little more structured, but every poem I write doesn't have to go into a book.

Photo Thanks To Content Pixie

I could also work on getting individual poems published and getting a little money through that. I read somewhere that someone made it their goal to send out different poems to three different publishers every month. I could do this too. I get emails through AuthorsPublish which sends out lists of whose accepting manuscripts/pieces (paid and unpaid). I have a tracker on my computer to list what I sent out and to where. I'm all set up for it!

Photo By Greg Rakozy

Things are always circling in the back of my mind too. Should I pull out the romance novel I started writing and work on that again? (I don't want to get pegged as a romance author though). I do need to sort through what speculative poems I have and start on that poetry book, but maybe after Seasons of Sensation. Should I look for an agent? Perhaps after Seasons of Sensation. And I simply need to pull out the short stories I already have written and start compiling them into a book. Lastly, I should totally start being more consistent with this blog! It does get lots of traffic! 

Thanks For Reading,

Happy New Year's To You All!

Photo Thanks To BoliviaInteligente

Sale For Poetry Month

Un-Clenched Emotion, Kindle Edition, will once again be on sale for ninety nine cents (.99) for poetry month. The book normally costs $2.99. Get it by going to this link: https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y The sale starts on Monday April 22nd 2024 and will end Monday April 29th 2024. I have not been successful with these sales before, but maybe this time will be better. I wasn't ordinally successful giving my book away for free at first either. However last year, I made the best seller for free books list on Amazon. I have set some advertising up this time which I haven't tried before. Fingers crossed. It's also April, poetry month, and this blog get more traffic this month. Here's one of my poems from the book to give you a taste of what it is like:

YouTube Video of The Sea

Obviously, for poetry month I have been working on marketing. I learned about Amazon Ads. There was a rumor going around on Facebook that a book would get in Amazon's newsletter if it had 50 ratings and over a four star review. I asked Alexa, and she said it was not enough. She pretty much said that it was secret the way Amazon chooses to place books in their newsletter. This stuff is hardly poetic. I have done a lot of work on my next book, Seasons of Sensation. It's still nowhere near complete but is really coming along. That's what I have REALLY done for poetry month. I haven't decided how I am going to publish Seasons of Sensation, whether I'll try a traditional publisher or if I'll publish on my own. I hope that you choose to buy Un-Clenched Emotion this time and decide that you would like to read more of my stuff.

November Is Novel Writing Month

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A few years back, I learned that November was novel writing month.  When twitter was twitter, authors used to post how many words they had written a day or week.  If you are like me and wonder how long a novel is, it's usually 80k words, or 80 thousand words, give or take.  I tried to look up how big a general novel is by pages, but I quickly learned they do it by words.  Books are all kinds of different sizes, so it makes sense that they do it that way.  I have never written close to 80k words.

I have always wanted to participate in novel writing month, but whenever November comes around, chaos hits.  I get so busy, and since my mother-in-law passed in November of 2018, it's an emotional month.  I would like to write an actual novel.  The most words I have written for one unfinished story is just over 14.5k back it 2018 (before November).  That story needs major editing and there's much more to write if I ever want to get that done.  I'm not very invested in it except that it's my first serious attempt at a novel.  I am happy to say, while it might not be a novel, I have been working on my next poetry book this month. In fact I have simultaneously been working on it and writing this.  It won't be anywhere close to 80k words, but it will be Much larger than "Un-Clenched Emotion".  It already is.  So I am counting it as a novel.

Since I've made progress on my next book this year, I'll tell you what the title and theme is. I've been holding back until now because I am never sure if it's ever going to get done. My next poetry book will be called "Seasons of Sensation".  I am writing poems for each of the seasons and months over the course of a year in "Seasons of Sensation." It starts on December 21st which is close to New Year's Eve and New Years Day.  It didn't make sense to start on New Years which is 10 days into winter, and then end the book in winter.  Then it would have two sections of winter in the book while the rest of the seasons only have one section.  I have not decided exactly where to end "Seasons of Sensation".  I was thinking of my Birthday, which is December 13th, and close to the end of fall, or the last day of fall, which would be of course, December 20th.  So I am thinking that it might need something after the Birthday poem, but I am leaning towards Birthday because that would make a great beginning or ending in a book about the cycle of the year.  I am also not using numerical dates in "Seasons of Sensation" so an actual poem focusing on December 20th specifically is unnecessary.

Photo by D koi on Unsplash

I haven't left you guys with a new poem, that I don't plan on publishing, in a while... so today I will give you my alternative to "Jack Sprat".  I read a poem that was a nursery rhyme rewritten and decided to do one myself with a science fiction theme.  This fits here because the next poetry book I intend to make after "Seasons of Sensation" is one full of speculative poetry, (science fiction and fantasy poems leaning towards a dystopian, or a dark theme).  Here's my poem:

Jack of the Future

 

“Dear Sir, our nanobots have detected high cholesterol,

and that’s not all,”

I’m afraid your heart may burst,”

It isn’t the worst.

 

“But this technology can heal me, right?”

Of certain things I cannot bite.

 

“The cholesterol, yes,

It isn’t the best,

but you have a rare disease which even nanobots cannot cure,

of that, I am sure.”

“I am afraid you can eat no fat.”

Well, drat.

                        

“Dear Misses, our nanobots have detected a rare disease they cannot fix,

you and vegetables do not mix.”

Impossible,

Not even a salad will be tossable.

“Your body can not digest lean,

eat unhealthily to keep your digestion clean.”

 

Husband and wife together,

Her stout, him light as a feather.

“What’s to be eating?”

Is their greeting.

 

“I can eat no salad,” said she,

“I can eat no meat,” said he.

 

One plate shared.

Still, they were wonderfully paired.

Salad and meat.

Well, isn’t that neat.

 

An empty plate, and empty platter.

Crises averted, nothing’s the matter.