What’s an Abecedarian Anyway?

Maybe you’ve delved into acrostic poems, but have you gone all medieval and tried the related abecedarian poem? In the tradition of earlier sacred poetry (think Psalm 118 which is alphabetical in Hebrew), Chaucer once offered a translation of a French poem-prayer, An A.B.C., where each stanza began with a letter of the medieval Latin alphabet. Here are just three stanzas in Middle English to illustrate:

Almighty and al merciable quene,
To whom that al this world fleeth for socour,
To have relees of sinne, sorwe and tene,
Glorious virgine, of alle floures flour,
To thee I flee, confounded in erreur!
Help and releve, thou mighty debonaire,
Have mercy on my perilous langour!
Venquisshed me hath my cruel adversaire.

Bountee so fix hath in thyn herte his tente,
That wel I wot thou wolt my socour be,
Thou canst not warne him that, with good entente,
Axeth thyn help. Thyn herte is ay so free,
Thou art largesse of pleyn felicitee,
Haven of refut, of quiete and of reste.
Lo, how that theves seven chasen me!
Help, lady bright, er that my ship to-breste!

Comfort is noon, but in yow, lady dere,
For lo, my sinne and my confusioun,
Which oughten not in thy presence appere,
Han take on me a grevous accioun
Of verrey right and desperacioun;
And, as by right, they mighten wel sustene
That I were worthy my dampnacioun,
Nere mercy of you, blisful hevene quene.

[An A.B.C., an abecedarian poem by Chaucer continues, with side-by-side French original]

How Does the Abecedarian Differ from the Acrostic?

Acrostic poems, if you read down the first letters of the poem lines, form a secret message, name, or phrase. They use a “letters” approach, but the letters are not in alphabetic order the way they are in an abecedarian poem.

In our book How to Write a Form Poem: A Guided Tour of 10 Fabulous Forms, poet Tania Runyan begins her discussion of acrostics with this simple illustration:

Terrific
Amiable
Nature-loving
Intelligent
Adorable

She’s being a little tongue-in-cheek. Acrostics are good for that. Overall, they have a different sense to them than abecedarian poems. More subversive, witty, tricky, or just plain silly. Not usually sacred. Not signaling wholeness or completeness or totality, like abecedarians often attempt.

Abecedarians Aren’t Just for Chaucer

Modern poets have brought the abecedarian form forward in time. Carolyn Forché, for instance, composed “On Earth” and went the extra mile by not only beginning her stanzas with the requisite sequential letters but also making the lines of each letter’s stanza begin with that letter. Her stanza featuring L, for instance, reads as such:

languid at the edge of the sea
lays itself open to immensity
leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers along the road
left everything left all usual worlds behind
library, lilac, linens, litany

Forché’s technique here almost makes the poem feel like a catalog poem. It’s those repeating Ls. They may not be full-word or phrase repetitions, as is standard in a catalog poem, but the repetition of the Ls manages to create a similar incantatory effect. Also, did you catch it? Forché gives a subtle nod to the historical sacred use of the abecedarian form in that word “litany” at the end of the stanza.

Another example of the form is this wonderful abecedarian by Jessica Greenbaum. She uses her title to get the first letter of the alphabet into her poem. Clever! She also manages to make what can sometimes be a stilted form quite poetic by including plenty of rhymes and slant rhymes inside the lines, plus including the occasional catalog technique. Greenbaum, like Forché, gives a nod to the historical sacred use of the form, especially in the latter half of her poem. (If you’re wanting to see the rhymes and slant rhymes and catalog techniques, just look for our addition of bold and italic, respectively (bold for rhymes, italic for catalogs); note that “aleph” and “tav” were italicized in the original poem.)

A Poem for S.

Because you used to leaf through the dictionary,
Casually, as someone might in a barber shop, and
Devotedly, as someone might in a sanctuary,
Each letter would still have your attention if not
For the responsibilities life has tightly fit, like
Gears around the cog of you, like so many petals
Hinged on a daisy. That’s why I’ll just use your
Initial. Do you know that in one treasured story, a
Jewish ancestor, horseback in the woods at Yom
Kippur, and stranded without a prayer book,
Looked into the darkness and realized he had
Merely to name the alphabet to ask forgiveness—
No congregation of figures needed, he could speak
One letter at a time because all of creation
Proceeded from those. He fed his horse, and then
Quietly, because it was from his heart, he
Recited them slowly, from aleph to tav. Within those
Sounds, all others were born, all manner of
Trials, actions, emotions, everything needed to
Understand who he was, had been, how flaws
Venerate the human being, how aspirations return
Without spite. Now for you, may your wife’s
X-ray return with good news, may we raise our
Zarfs to both your names in the Great Book of Life.

Your Turn: Try an Abecedarian Poem

Start your poem with a word that begins with A. Then begin each ensuing stanza of your poem (or each line, like Greenbaum above) with the next letter of the alphabet. While we’ve said to start with A, maybe you want to be tricky and start with Z and go backwards. One of the uses of the abecedarian is to bring a sense of completeness to your subject (from A-Z, as they say!). But maybe you just love the alphabet and want to play around with it, no strings attached. To bring more cohesion and poetic sense to your poem, you can try including rhymes and internal rhymes or use the occasional catalog technique.

If you don’t try the prompt, but you do have a favorite abecedarian poem, tell us about it in the comment box. We’d love to hear.

Photo by Souradeep Biswas, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.

More Medieval Inspiration

Chaucer: A European Life

Chaucer and the First Great English Poem

Simon Armitage Translates “Pearl”

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