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Here we are at the start of another year in the Gregorian calendar, and on our dVerse calendar the first ‘Meeting the Bar’ prompt, which hones our critique and craft of poetry.

And since we are at the beginning, putting words again to paper then we are naturally invoking the alphabet as does Emily Yearn’s “Seeding an Alphabet”

“To invent the alef-beit, 
decipher the grammar of crows, 
read a tangle of bare branches 
with vowels of the last leaves 
scrawling their jittery speech 
on the sky’s pale page. 

Choose a beginning. 
See what God yields and dirt cedes...”

Similarly Francine Sterle’s “Deciphering the Alphabet” sees the tracks and marks in winter snow decoded as an alphabet of flora and fauna.

“Each tree 
was a letter once. 
Pagans 
spelled out their secrets 
by threading 
the proper leaves 
in proper order— 
Birch tree, Heather leaf, 
leaf of the Ash. 
A language 
you could hold in your hand…

Everything that moves
leaves a story. No story 
can exist by itself….”

And for today’s MTB prompt we are becoming Abecedarians – that is taking the Latin script alphabet of consonants and vowels and writing an acrostic type poem thus:-

Poetry Rules:

  • 26 lines
  • each line begins with a letter of the alphabet
  • the letters are sequential

Poetry Options:

  • can include ‘abecedarian/rius’ or alphabet or any A word as the titular start of the poem!
  • can begin from Z and work backwards to A
  • can start anywhere within the alphabet but continues on sequentially through all 26
  • can be broken into stanzas but not as stand alones
  • syllabic count and rhyme is up to you

Hint:
Enjambment will help with the acrostic technique but try and align breaks with natural syllable or beat patterns. For example, break after a word that ends on a strong syllable.

Helpful Examples

Once you have written and posted your poem, according to the guidelines above, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting and reading other contributors as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.
Please also TAG dVerse in your post, or include a link at the end of your poem that leads readers back to this dVerse prompt

[N.B. Mr Linky closes Saturday 3 p.m. EST]