ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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When you first started learning about poetry, did you have any idea there would be so many [Girl standing at the front of a class teaching poetry]

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different kinds of poems?

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And not just any poems…poems with rules and structures, that make the whole thing

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kind of feel like a math equation.

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Are you just plain sick of it? [Boy in bed with a thermometer in his mouth]

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Well, that's too bad, because here's another one!

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But never fear!

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This one is pretty fun.

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Well… [Poems skydiving]

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We think all poems are fun.

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To each his own.

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Acrostic poems are just what they sound like – poems that go "across."

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And that’s about all there is to it.

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Have fun!

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Whoops…

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We forgot to do the explaining part, didn’t we? [Girl explaining acrostic poems]

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All right, here goes.

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An acrostic poem means a poem that takes one word and then uses each of the letters in

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that word to spell out other words, so that the poem ends up looking sort of like a crossword [Coop teaching acrostic poem rules]

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puzzle.

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In case you can’t envision that perfectly in your head, let's check out an example.

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How about we write an acrostic poem using the word “acrostic”?

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First, we have to come up with a word that relates to the word “acrostic” and starts

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with the first letter, A.

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Since we think acrostic poems are amazing, let's use that. [Girl with thumbs up writing acrostic poem]

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The words you choose can be words that remind you of the first word, or words that describe

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how it makes you feel, or pretty much anything.

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Come up with a word for each letter of your starting word, and you get something that

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looks like this.

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Acrostic: Amazing, Cool, Radical, Outstanding, Silly, Tricky, Imaginative, Clever.

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Pretty neat, huh?

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Of course, you don't have to always make each letter the first letter of your new words.

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You can arrange your acrostic poem however you please, so that it uses whichever letters [Acrostic poem rearranged]

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you want.

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And if you're feeling extra-confident, you could even try to tell a story with it, like

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this one about a vampire.

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Even vampires make apple pie for dessert.

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See how each word intersects with our main word, VAMPIRE, in different ways? [Vampire acrostic poem in a book]

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You can do that, too, if you'd like.

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The best part about acrostic poems is that they work with any word in the world. [Poems shaking hands with the Earth]

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Seriously, scientists have yet to find a single word that can’t be acrosticized.

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So give it a shot!

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And if you’re suffering from a little writers’ block, technically, this counts: [A boy in class moving a writing block]

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School School School School School School.

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Though your teacher probably won’t like it very much. [Boy hands teacher acrostic poem]

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