Acrostic #NaPoWriMo18 #NPM2018

Who can say cats
aren’t holy?
Spirit incarnate
living poem
sacred offering
modern totem
or maybe the god of love himself
come to earth.

Notes: My favorite cat, Chipotle, inspired this poem. There he is in the photo! I have been trying and failing to write an acrostic poem for days now. I know, I know. An acrostic! The easiest things in poetry totally stump me. Maybe I just wasn’t choosing the right word. As soon as I started thinking about Chipotle, this poem started to come together. Probably I should just write about cats, the prairie, or poetry every day, because I can always find a poem about one of those three topics.

Posted

April 24, 2018

cats, NaPoWriMo

Elisabeth Ellington

Tags:

#napowrimo18, cats, poetry challenge, poetry writing month

Comments

9 responses to “Acrostic #NaPoWriMo18 #NPM2018”

Amanda Potts

April 24, 2018

You are making me fall in love with Chipotle, too. “The god of love himself/ come to earth” – that pretty much describes how one of my cats feels about herself, too. Also, I love this way of writing an acrostic – I’d never thought of doing that before!

Reply
1. Elisabeth Ellington
  
  April 24, 2018
  
  I meant to add in the process notes where I got the idea from and totally forgot. Oops! Sorry, Fran McVeigh. I need to edit and link to her post. I’d never seen middle of the line acrostics either, but they’re much better than first word acrostics, I think. Chipotle is a very fine cat to be in love with! Of course, what cat isn’t the right cat to be in love with??
  
  Reply
cweichel

April 24, 2018

Chipotle reminds me of a cat we had when I was small. I have to admit that this is a new version of acrostic poem. I thought each line started with a letter of the world, but I like your’s better.

Reply
1. Elisabeth Ellington
  
  April 24, 2018
  
  I forgot to give credit to where I found this idea! Will have to update the Process Notes. I don’t think I could write the more traditional acrostic poem without coming up with some VERY random words!
  
  Reply
Anna

April 24, 2018

Chipotle looks darling! I’m a cat person and I just absolutely loved this tribute to Chipotle.

Reply
glenda funk

April 24, 2018

Of course, I’ll not argue with your assessment of cats. Chipotle is lovely, and I really like the poem, especially the question it poses.You could do worse than to write about only three things. It worked for Emily Dickinson: love, nature, death.

Reply
1. Elisabeth Ellington
  
  April 24, 2018
  
  Thanks, Glenda. Had to laugh at your comment about Emily Dickinson. There she is, writing about the biggest possible topics, and here I am, with my cat poems! (I’ve never liked Dickinson’s poetry, mostly because I think it’s hard, but I can appreciate limited topics, short length, and lots of dashes. Perhaps I should revisit and try reading her again.)
  
  Reply
karpenglish

April 24, 2018

A very clever subversion of the acrostic, plus, it lets you use more words so the poem does not seem like a random list. (Possibly I have trouble with acrostics too. 😉) Chipotle is sweet. He looks a bit like Ariella, who is also a tuxedo cat.

Reply
1. Elisabeth Ellington
  
  April 24, 2018
  
  Yes, that’s one reason I’ve never liked acrostics–such random words and often not very beautiful words either! I also discovered another problem I have with acrostics–confusion about initial letters. I had been working on one about gardening using overwhelmed as my word, and I had several lines written in my head–only to realize as I sat down to get it on paper that no, “every” does NOT start with the letter v. Good GRIEF! I love tuxedo cats (and now have 3! All quite marvelous, though of course Chipotle is the best of all.)
  
  Reply