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!

 

Kindle Sale For Poetry Month

First, this blog post does not count as my monthly blog post in my opinion because this is an advertisement. I'm putting my Amazon kindle poetry book, Un-Clenched Emotion, on sale for .99 cents from April 1st-7th 2026. Sale Starts on the first at 5am Pacific Standard Time (8am EST) and ends on the 8th at 5am in the morning. Get it at: 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZNVH4Y

April is Poetry Month. It deserves celebrating! Un-Clenched Emotion has a 4.5 star rating out of 52 reviews on Amazon. Same rating out of 51 reviews on Goodreads. It's an easy to understand poetry book, with a lot of nature themes. 

About Un-Clenched Emotion the AI Review once said:

Customers say

Customers find this poetry collection to be a fabulous collection of poems about honest emotions, with one review noting how the heart serves as a well-spring of feelings. Moreover, the book features identifiable themes, with one customer highlighting how it juxtaposes tangible experiences with elements of mystery. Additionally, customers describe the poems as amazingly beautiful.

AI Generated from the text of customer reviewsGenerated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

This is my favorite review:

This Author truly understands nature!

Review by DAUNTLESS-SECRETS OF THE ANDES in the United States on October 22, 2023

“What a wonderful collection of poems! If you love creation like I do, you will enjoy how the author puts her feelings of appreciation and discovery into words that sound like home. These poems are not only beautiful, but most of them are quite uplifting (except for the middle collection called "Despairing") My favorite begins with the words, "The day I fell in love with night..." We even took her writings to share around a Search term:beach campfire and covered the first section titled, "Enjoying". It was a memorable experience and a great way to end the day. The last portion, called "Philosophizing" also had some exceptional entries, but the ones I'll always re-visit, are those that centered on understanding and appreciating the wonder of nature.”

And my response is- You took my book to the beach and read part of it by a campfire? Amazing! That's the kind of book I wanted to publish! 

              By Acton Crawford on Unsplash

As a reminder to my readers, Un-Clenched Emotion is always on Kindle Unlimited for free. If you download it an read it, I'll make a few cents. I'm not sure if my book sales will go up or not if you read it through Unlimited, but it would be cool if it did. Reviews will count towards Verified Sale star ratings through Kindle Unlimited. Un-Clenched Emotion was once a best seller in free poetry e-books (if you look through my blog, there's another post about it). Buy my book and enjoy reading it!

Welcome To The Heart Month

Illustration by Round Icons on Unsplash

First, I want to say I did do one writing thing for January. I entered a contest writing about my happiest moment as a caregiver, (one of the times I took my daughter horseback riding). It wasn't a writing contest per sé but it did have the requirement of 300 words or more, so I'm counting it as a writing thing. Not sure when or if I'll hear back, the deadline was the 31st of January. Hopefully I'll be able to do another writing thing in February, whether that's working on my book(s), or submitting poems for publication, or writing reviews, or anything that has anything to do with writing. I'm working hard on focusing on the positive, I'm internally criticizing myself so hard. That's not very good for my nerves, or heart. And of course, February is the heart month, both the physical and emotional heart.

I'm sure the emotional part is thanks to Saint Valentines Day. I'm guessing that people wanting to bring awareness to heart health decided it would be congruess having the physical heart month attached to the emotional heart month. To me personally, they are very intertwined. Sometimes my heart is heavy, (pun intended,) because my Grandmother died of a heart attack when I was a young teenager. Not only that, most people have to live through the pain of their grandparents dying, but practically all of my Dad's family has heart problems, and my Dad has had many heart attacks. Fortunately he is still alive and doing everything he can to keep his heart healthy. According to my echocardiogram, my heart is doing well despite the occasional bout of heartburn. So what's Heart month got to do with poetry? Well that's easy to answer, poetry is the language of the heart!

Illustration by Luky Triohandoko on Unsplash

Poetry is the expression of emotion, a word which is often a synonym of the word heart. While I named my first poetry book "Un-Clenched Emotion" it could have easily been "Unclenched Heart". I poured my heart out when I wrote those poems, just like whenever I write any poem. I'm sure any poet would tell you the same. The other reason I'm writing out the theme of the month of February is because it's something I would often do in my poetry classes: ask the students to write about the month we're in or about a Holiday we're near. That got me the idea,  and many written poems, for "Seasons of Sensation". If your struggling with ideas to write this month, write about February. If you're a reader, read some poetry in celebration of the month. 

  

                                                    

Photo by Ahmet Yüksek ✪ on Unsplash

Or don't read poetry at all, read other stuff that has to do with February. Since it's African American History Month as I well, I do reccomend reading some poems by Phillis Wheatley, a Women African American Poet from the late 1700's. She was a slave who became educated and then later freed. Of course, there are also many more things you can read for African History month as well, like Fedrick Douglass's autobiography, or the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. February is also the awareness month of many things. For breveity's sake of this blog, we'll just focus on February being heart month. If you want, you could read non-fiction medical books on the heart. You never know where a person's interests lie, I happen to like physics books, both science fiction and non-fiction books. Be sure to take care of your hearts, both emotional and physical!

2/13/2026 

Today, A few days after I first wrote this post, I went to look and see my rankings on the seller list for books (I was ranked low) and I ended up looking at AI summarizing my reviews. Here's what it says today (I notice it changes every so often, despite not getting more reviews):

I immediately noticed that someone said the "heart" was a well-spring of feelings. I thought, how fitting for the blog I just wrote! Than I started to read my reviews to see if I could find this particular one. I couldn't find it, but noticed that the word heart was all over the place in my reviews. That's great, that means that this blog is relevant to my poetry. Thanks for reading!

Happy Birthday Natasha: Kindle .99 cent sale

 

My 46th birthday is coming up in a few days. In honor of that, I have decided to put the Kindle Book Un-Clenched Emotion on sale for ninety-nine cents ($0.99). The promotion runs from today, Tuesday December 9th 2025 to Tuesday December 16th. Go to:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZNVH4Y to buy the book. Or you can read it on Kindle Unlimited for free. The 99 cents is discounted from the usual 2.99 it costs for this book. That's about 33% off!

photo by: Robert Anderson 

Now, double Happy Birthday, especially to those who like print books, my paperback is still 30% off. Instead of the normal 9.99, it's $7. Amazon decided to put on the discount without consulting me, so I don't know how long this will last! (I'm happy about the discount, I just wish I'd been notified!). The paperback of Un-Clenched Emotion would make a great gift 🎁 for Christmas 🎄 or for someone's birthday 🎂 lol. If not as a gift, it would be great for yourself, perhaps to put on your coffee table. If you want the paperback go to: https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Collection-Poems/dp/1537725327 

Thanks for checking out my blog and Happy Reading!

Paperback 30% Off!

 

Wow! I've been keeping track of my Amazon book pages, and it's a good thing I did. They decided to list paperwork my book for sale for 30% off. Discount, awesome! It's normally $9.99, but Amazon has decided to only charge you $7. I have no idea how long this is going to last. There is plenty of time to get Un-Clenched Emotion for Christmas present, ships is 2 days! A great idea for a gift. 

Go to https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Collection-Poems/dp/1537725327

PS. I am putting my Kindle book on sale for .99 for one week starting December 9th, 2025. A great self-care gift for you. The sale is in honor of my birthday coming up, and I chose to do this one!

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.

Should Poems Have a Title?

Photo by Alisa Anton on Unsplash

If you read a lot of poetry, you will notice that there are many poems out there without a title. In fact, a very famous poet, Emily Dickinson, did not title any of her poems. The choice to title poems is up to the author. It is the readers right to have an opinion on whether a title should be placed or not. I am of the belief that the choice of titling a poem is a matter of artistic expression.

There was a time in my life when I titled some of my poems and left others without a title. Now I title everything. The reason for that is because, submitting a poem for publication, I got rejected. The reason they gave me was that they could not figure out what the poem was about. I realized that adding a title would add clarity and add a little extra something to the poem. I titled the rejected piece, "It's All About The Sky," and don't remember if I submitted it for publication anywhere else.

I also choose to add titles to my poems for easier organization and recognition. When writing many pieces, it is helpful to have an indicator of which piece is being talked about in a conversation or in a paper. It also helps in poetry collection books. It can be argued that a title to a poem is unnecessary for organization. When a poem has no title, its first line becomes the title. That has been the case with Dickson's poems in my English books. Still, I think titles are beneficial for clarities sake.

I have run into the problem of giving some of my works the same title. It will be quite a project going through my writings and figuring which titles should be changed, or if I am willing to have some of my poetry titled the same. I have so many poems that giving every piece a different title might be unattainable. It is possible that I may choose to have the first line of my poem become the new title. If this is the case, I will write that one line down twice. There's nothing wrong with a little repetition in poetry.

 

It is kind of weird that some poets choose to go without. An author would probably not write a book without a title. That would be weird. It may be that some poets don't title their poetry for the very sake of weirdness. That's fine. Titling poetry is a choice. I have nothing against authors who choose not to title their poems. I, however, now choose to title mine.

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash

 

They Left Out the Title

Empty words expected to be gleaned through inference.
But how can we tell when the line before and the line after is left blank?
It puts a new meaning to 'reading in between the lines'.
Reading the words after blank spaces,
our hearts may be captivated
and our creativity may spell the subject out.
Our own interpretation.
That must be the hope of those who left the title without.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Another Sale!

I admit I had an alternative motive for posting my poems on social media all week. I am trying to sale my book once again. "Un-Clenched Emotion" is 99 cents on the kindle from Thanksgiving to the 29th, which covers both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The link is: https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y

Photo by John Michael Thomson on Unsplash

However, I did think people might like a sample of my work whether they end up buying my book or not.  None of the things I shared do I officially plan to publish, and they are here on this blog. You can find the link to the page on the right under the heading: The Written Poetry of Natasha Gruss McKinley

Photo by Bruno Kelzer on Unsplash

Black Sales Days

A bustling crowd makes my head feel like it wants to burst.

Pushing through people is anti-joy,

a few Black Fridays I have bitten my lip and tried it.

A tea kettle for my father and

vague reembrace of a cousin joining me.

It was everything I thought I would hate (except the cousin).

Curious about a drug store,

there weren't too many people there

and the sales were amazing.

Obviously, a discrepancy.

On Cyber Mondays

I can hide from the world

and get those steals

that seem to be greatest

after a day of  Thanks and long weekend.

@Natasha McKinley

Success

 

I am really happy to report that the free promotion I ran for my poetry book, 'Un-Clenched Emotion' was a huge success. So successful in fact, that I made Amazon's Best Seller List for free poetry. I also made the best seller list for free books in 45-Minute Literature & Fiction Short Reads. Check out the following screen shots taken on April 7th, 2023; the first day of this promotion:

It took a lot of work just to give my book away. I have tried running a free promotion a handful of times. Some promotions I didn't manage to give any free books away at all. Then I got listed in freebooksy for the final days of one of my promotions and gave away 6 books.  I was happy about that. I applied with them this time but they did not pick up my book again. However 3 other places did decide to promote my book. They are: It’s Write Now, Armadillo books (under the promoting name Crave Books), and Sandra's Book Club. I am happy to say I did not have to pay any money for these programs to promote my book! So, I'm sure you're wondering how many books I gave away this time. The answer is seventy, 70, and I am still blown away by this success.  I had to take another screen shot just to believe it! Here it is:

If you're wondering, I do not make any money when running these promotions. I did get 3 reviews of my book doing this, and obviously there is still time for other people to review. Even though I didn't make money doing this, I still feel successful. All I wanted was to get my book out there for people to enjoy. Making the Best Seller Lists was not even a goal. I am pleased and proud that it happened. I don't think I'll be running a free promotion for this book again. I do plan on trying a 99 cent promotion next time but it will be awhile yet for that. Amazon only allows authors to run a promotion like this once every 3 months.  

If you're reading this, it's probably likely you downloaded my book. I wanted to thank you for that. I also wanted to let you know my book is ALWAYS free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. I do get a miniscule amount of money if you download and read it from there. My goal was and is not to make money with this book, my goal is to share it with the world. Thank you for helping me succeed!

Free Ebook For Easter

 

Happy Easter and Happy Poetry Month. To celebrate, I am once again offering my kindle ebook, 'Un-Clenched Emotion', free to everyone! The promotion for this book runs from Friday April 7th, 2023 to April 11th, 2023.  Last time I offered my book for free, I gave away 6 books. I'm not sure if I'll run this promotion again, right now I am not planning on it.  The link for the this is:   https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y Of course the link is all over the site. I'm sorry to bombard you, but I want to make it easy for you to get my book!

I don't make any royalties ($) when I give out my book for free.  I do make some pennies when someone downloads and reads my book on Kindle Unlimited. You heard me right, cents, not dollars. I also recieve a few cents a month for being enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program. When someone actually buys the book, I get a couple of dollars. And my Sales Ranking goes up.  So of course I am always hoping to sale. I haven't sold many copies, but I have sold some. For me, that's reason to celebrate! 

I also believe the reviews I have received for "Un-Clenched Emotion" is reason to celebrate. Right now I have an average rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 (out of 25 ratings). That's pretty great! I've received so many honest reviews by belonging to review programs myself. Right now my favorite review program is Sandra's Book Club. It's at: http://sandrasbookclub.blogspot.com/ It is awesome, and if you are an author and decide to join, please mention my name. Anyway, one of my favorite 5 star reviews for my book is as follows:

If you want to know what's inside the book, here are a few of my YouTube teasers:

I hope you seize this opportunity to get my book for free and I hope you enjoy!

'Remembering What Was Called Country' Teaser

 

Natasha McKinley, (formerly called Natasha Gruss,) reads part of her #poem "Remembering What Was Called Country" from her #poetry #book "Un-Clenched Emotion". This is from the Look Inside feature on #amazon. The poem cuts off so Natasha only #reads her poem to that part. In order to get this book, in print or for your #kindle, visit Natasha's #author page at: https://www.amazon.com/Natasha-Gruss/e/B01LZE8CKO This book is on #kindleunlimited 

I read 2 other poems, (Thunderstorm and The Sea,) from my book on my YouTube Channel at: https://youtube.com/@natashamckinley1387

There are also 3 more poems that I read on my Channel that will not be published elsewhere. They are called My World, Ocean Haiku, and Untitled Coffee Poem. You can also view these poems and read others I have written on this blog. To make it easy for you to find the page, it's at: https://authornatashagruss.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

I hope you enjoy!

The Sea from "Un-Clenched Emotion"

I made another video of one of my poems on my YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/@natashamckinley1387

The description and video, which I think you find enjoyable, are as follows:

Natasha (Gruss) McKinley #reads her #poem "The Sea" from her #poetry book, "Un-Clenched Emotion". This is the second poem of the #book and is in the #Kindle Look Inside section of #Amazon. The Kindle version of the book can be found at: https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y 

The print version is at:https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Collection-Poems/dp/1537725327 

Enjoy!

Learning How to Publish and Promote

                                                         

                                                         Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

First, right now, 10/15/22, until the 18th of October, the "U)n-Clenched Emotion," kindle book version, is on sale for 99 cents on Amazon.  It normally costs $2.99.  It's always free on Kindle Unlimited.  If you haven't already found the link on this blog, it's at: https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y   This book is authored by Natasha Gruss, which is me,  even though I am now Natasha McKinley.  Amazon does not let people change the name of the author of a published book, which makes sense.

                                              

                                              Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

I found some other interesting things about how I can edit and promote the books I write.  Even after it was published way back in 2016.  I have not yet had my 2 of the same books, (the kindle version and the print edition,) linked.  Hopefully this is in the process of happening.  I thought that I had messed up by not originally linking my books.  Well, I just found out it wasn't my fault.  Author's used to publish their books with Create Space.  That's where I published my print book. Now, you can not publish your books with that.  I had to go into Create Space and transfer the print book to Kindle Direct Publishing, where are where all book versions are published now.  I had published my delightful book when Amazon was making this change, so my linking got lost in the cracks.  I have changed the book descriptions, the subtitles, and the keywords to match.  Hopefully this will get my books linked in a few days; after my promotion ends.

                                            Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Kindle does not let you price your book at 99 cents all the time.  You have to do a promotion to do that.  You get one count down deal during a promotion period which lasts for a few months.  Hopefully I will be able to do another free promotion for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.  Amazon also added another way to promote my book.  I was able to nominate it for Prime First Reads.  That's where Prime members get to download a free book, out of a list of a limited amount of books, once a month.  I doubt they will choose my book, but it was an easy click to nominate it.  Doing is risk-free.  I hope I have given authors some good information on Publishing and promoting their books.  And if you are not an author, I hope this was still an interesting read.

Poetry Writing Prompts

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Often, authors encounter writers block.  I am fortunate that I rarely encounter this when writing poetry.  The reason for that is because I have some go to writing prompts to help me out.  I used to volunteer to teach poetry classes and the following prompts are what I used when I needed to come up with ideas quickly.
I would have people write about colors, things that happen in the calendar year, music, teach a specific form of poem, and use published poems and authors as inspiration.  Writing about color is a little self-explanatory, so I will only go in depth on the other prompts I have listed.

Photo by Renáta-Adrienn on Unsplash

Calendar Year

I often had my students write about things that happened in the calendar year.  Things like seasons, the weather, holidays, and the specific months.  It was easy to look outside and prompt my students to write about what the weather was doing, or to have them write about the specific season we were experiencing at the time of the class.  Writing about the month we were in was also effortless.  I always felt holidays were especially inspirational.  I wrote so many of these types of poems that I am working on making a book out of them.  I currently have 42 poems typed up, and I am not even finished!

Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash

Music

I have written a little bit about this in previous blog posts.  In my classes, sometimes I would simply have the students write a poem about their favorite song.  Sometimes I played the same song for everyone and had them all write a poem about that song.  You might think that you would get very similar poems doing this, but actually, they came out very diverse.  I always did want to be careful with this prompt because I did not want to infringe on any copywrites.  If you are simply writing this for yourself, that doesn't matter.  Done carefully, poems written inspired by music can still be published.  I found a call for submissions for poems that are inspired by the Rolling Stones.  Sometimes I would play music on glass bottles.  You could also play your own instrument, if you have one, for inspiration.  In this case, you do not have to worry about plagiarism.  I am of the belief that music is poetry.  I've seen some lyrics of various artists printed out and they look like wonderful poetry.

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

Forms of Poems

I really like to write sonnets, haikus, and acrostic poems.  I like them, therefor I teach them.  Haikus are pretty straight forward.  Write a poem with 3 lines.  The first line being 5 syllables, the second line being 7 syllables, and the third line being 5 syllables again.  I know that some people argue that Haikus should be about certain things like nature, or that it should be conveyed in a different way, but I don't think that has to be the case.  I was teaching poetry to beginners, so simply saying to write a 5-7-5 syllable poem was good enough for me.  I also love to do Acrostic Poems.  These poems are poems where the first letter of each line spells out a word.

For example:

Next

Akin

To

Amazing

She

Happily

Ascends

 

I actually made money at some craft fairs charging people to have me write out an acrostic poem of their name.  I did not charge much, and yet, a surprising amount of people wanted to have this done.

 

Sonnets are a little harder.  I must admit that I still don't understand iambic pentameter very well, so I don't bother with it.  The great thing about poetry is that you don't Have To follow the rules.  There is a lot I can say about sonnets, so I will write about them in a future blog post.

Photo by Taha on Unsplash

Using Published Authors and Poems

Most of the time in my poetry class, I would choose 3 poets and their published poetry for inspiration.  I went to a poetry website, printed the author's bio, and a poem they had published.  We would read these bios and poems out loud and use them as inspiration to write our own poems.  This exercise took a little preparation, but I learned how to do it so well, it did not take much time to prepare at all.  Now when I am working on poetry, for fun, or to try to publish, I often read poetry ezines.  I have learned a lot from doing this.  For example, I knew about acrostic poetry, but I did not know there was a form of poetry where you start each line with a letter of the alphabet.  Finally, if none of these prompts work for you, you can find other prompts all over the internet.  There are many tweeted prompts every day, and Writer's Digest sends out writing prompts.  Writer's Block can be overcome!