The Line Acrostic: My Own Verse Form

I once invented a form of verse. I think. Or rather, so I must conclude. Because no one has ever heard of it, and I can't find the book in which I thought I read about it. Nor can I find any trace of the poem written in that form which was presented as an example in that book.

So... maybe I imagined it. Maybe I dreamt it. Maybe it's slippage. I don't know.

So here I'm going to stake my claim to it, and even give it a name. And if someone wants to tell me that there's already a name for it, I'll be happy to know it and give up my claim.

It's relatively simple, actually, and similar, in a way to villanelles and rondels. I think. It consists of five quatrains. The fifth quatrain is composed of the first line of the first quatrain, the second line of the second quatrain, the third line of the third quatrain, and the fourth line of the fourth quatrain.

That's why I call it a Line Acrostic, because it works like an acrostic, only made up of lines of verse, rather than letters.

The ones that I've written have an ABCB pattern of rhyme in each quatrain, including the fifth one, but I don't see that as a requirement of the form. They're also all in iambic septameter, but that's just the rhythm that comes naturally to me.

Here's an example that I actually have up on my website. It was the first one I ever wrote, and definitely not the best.

The Quality of Kindness

The quality of kindness doesn't care about tomorrow
Avoiding hurtful feelings for the moment is its goal
The cruelest cuts are those you know are meant to spare your feelings
For anger'd be ungrateful, so it festers in your soul.

Just think how things would be if people said what needed saying
The quality of mercy doesn't worry 'bout today
It understands that painful truths are better in the long run
That raising hopes to let them fall drives innocence away.

The history of man is full of misery inflicted
By people preaching kindness as they teach the world to lie
For kindness makes you feel good; you don't have to see the sorrow
Or looks of shocked betrayal when illusions finally die.

Oh, no one with a heart would want to be the cause of sadness
But there are times when sadness is the price we have to pay
To cleanly cut, and then move on; to learn from what has happened
It's harder to be merciful, but it's the better way.

The quality of kindness doesn't care about tomorrow
The quality of mercy doesn't worry 'bout today
For kindness makes you feel good; you don't have to see the sorrow
It's harder to be merciful, but it's the better way.

© 1997 by Lisa

Depression

Have you ever been depressed? I mean, so overwhelmed with bleakness that life seems to be a punishment?

I've been there. And... I think that all the verse I've ever written, other than those silly haikus (haiku? what's the plural of haiku?) and the Star Wars limericks, has been when I was so deeply depressed that the only way I could think of to express myself was through the structure that verse demands.

One time, I literally couldn't talk. I felt as though if I opened my mouth, I'd scream so hard that I'd rupture something. The poetry gave me a structure that I could focus on, and let me drain the despair out gradually.

I've been trying to decide whether or not to post any of that here. One of them... well, I posted it to an e-mail list once, and got an e-mail in return asking if I needed to talk to a suicide hotline, or something like that.

But hey, I don't even know if anyone's reading this blog anyway.

Pirates of the Caribbean -- The Sequel That Wasn't

Well. I think we've had enough poetry for now, don't you agree? How about some screenplay stuff?

The second Pirates of the Caribbean movie is due out soon, I hear, and from what I can tell, it's not going to be anything like what I came up with after walking out of the theater from the first one.

So this isn't a spoiler. Unless, of course, you haven't seen the first movie, in which case, you shouldn't be reading this; you should be running to your nearest video rental place and picking the thing up. It's nothing less than spectacular.

But it did raise one troubling spectre, if you'll pardon the pun. You see, if you remember, Will (the blacksmith turned hero played by Orlando Bloom) was the son of Bootstrap Bill Turner. When Barbossa led his mutiny against Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), old Bootstrap Bill had been the only member of the crew who thought it was wrong. He sent a piece of the cursed gold to his son Will, so that the mutineers would never be able to break the curse, and when Barbossa found out, he strapped Bill to a cannon and dropped him into the briney deep.

Why didn't they just kill him? Well, if you recall, part of the gold's curse was an inability to be killed. So weighing him down and sinking him was as good a way of any of getting him out of the way.

See where I'm going with this?

At the climax of the movie, Will cuts his palm, gets his blood on the last of the cursed gold, and drops it into the chest of coins. At which point, the curse is broken. All of the pirates become mortal, and hence killable.

It's funny how everyone glossed over Will's little act of patricide there. Because, of course, his father must have, er, given up the ghost at the very moment when the bloody gold piece hit the chest.

My theory was that in the second movie, this would all come out. Will would start having an awful run of bad luck, or see frightening visions, and when he checked with some palm reader or the like, he'd find out that it was because he'd caused the death of his father. And that the only way he could break the curse would be to find his father's remains and give them a proper burial.

Will and Elizabeth would have some adventures in the process, and at the end, we'd find out that it was a hoax, and that some relative of Captain Barbossa (the pirate who deposed Captain Jack Sparrow) had rigged the whole thing in order to get revenge on Will. Ah, and at the last moment, Will's life would be saved by...

...his father, of course. It would have turned out that the straps holding Bill and the cannon together had finally frayed and come loose, only a year or so before the events of the first movie. He'd been looking for Will all this time. Of course, Bootstrap Bill gives his life heroically, saving his only son. Sniff.

I still think it would have made a decent sequel. Be interesting to see what they actually do. And whether they'll ever deal with the whole patricide thing.

[Just a note about the pronunciation of Caribbean. I once heard, many years ago, that the original pronunciation was ca-ri-BE-an until a popular song came out which used the pronunciation ca-RIB-ean in order to fit the rhythm of the lyrics. I have no idea if this is true, and I can't find anything on the Internet to substantiate or refute it, but I thought I'd mention it as a possibility.]

Anti-Haiku Haiku

A couple of months ago, someone sent an e-mail to the whole company suggesting that since everyone was uptight about moving to a new building, we should have a haiku contest.

Huh? When did haiku become a tension breaker? I must have missed that memo.

Anyway, these were my entries. For some reason, they didn't get entered into the competition.

Haiku is easy
Pantoum is more challenging
Try it and you'll see

Haiku is boring
Limericks are much more fun
Even dirty ones

Some roses are red
Violets are a shade of blue
Haiku doesn't rhyme

© 2005 by Lisa

The Star Wars Hexology in Limericks

The fourth Star Wars movie came first
And it led to a decades long thirst
For starships and lasers
And photons and phasers
Its influence wasn't the worst

The second one wasn't half bad
Though the freezing of Solo was sad
But the biggest plot twist
Wasn't Luke's cut-off wrist
It was Vader as Skywalker's dad

The third movie sold lots of toys
Fuzzy Ewoks the stature of boys
Luke's regretting that kiss
Now that Leia's his sis
And Han Solo is sharing her joys

When George as a matter of course
Wanted science-y cause for the Force
He hyped up his story 'n
Made midichlorian
Claiming that it was the source

Penultimate Star Wars will show
How the clones Lucas made had to grow
Scientifically fake,
What a movie they'll make!
As the franchise continues to grow...

And what will we see in the end?
Now that Anakin's turned on his friend
If you fear Palpatine
Hope is on Tatooine
So let's go back and watch them again!

(Originally George wanted nine
But his six flicks will suit him just fine
He keeps franchising books
And has toy-movie hooks
And his bank account's bigger than mine!)

© 2003 by Lisa