Showing posts with label read. Show all posts
Showing posts with label read. Show all posts

Saturday, August 29, 2026

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!

 

Sunday, December 7, 2025

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!

Monday, April 22, 2024

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.

Thursday, March 9, 2023

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!





Saturday, August 13, 2022

Thunderstorm

https://youtu.be/67HAVaT4VZ0