Doug, Bill, Sheila, Patrick, & other members of POETRYETC,
Just discovered a distinguished precedent for "Doug's Acrostic", though not a "tech term" for it. Note that Nabokov's short story focuses on a professor gradually intrigued by acrostics.
"While acrostics are most often found in poetry, Vladimir Nabokov's short story "The Vane Sisters" contains an example of an acrostic formed with prose. In "The Vane Sisters," a short story which is about a professor who becomes fascinated with acrostics, the first letters of each word in the story's final paragraph spell out the phrase, "Icicles by Cynthia; Meter from me, Sybil." While these words may seem like nonsense if you haven't read the story, they are, in fact, key to interpreting the story's mysterious plot."
'I could isolate, consciously, little. Everything seemed blurred, yellow-clouded, yielding nothing tangible. Her inept acrostics, maudlin evasions, theopathies—every recollection formed ripples of mysterious meaning. Everything seemed yellowly blurred, illusive, lost.'
Here's a link to the full text of Nabokov's "The Vane Sisters":
http://www.tallinn.cold-time.com/texts/BOOKS/NABOKOW/vs.txt.htm
Barry
On Sat, 28 Sep 2019 09:34:37 -0600, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>You got it Bill; Barry, you make me smarter than I am, I think…
>
>Doug
>
>> On Sep 27, 2019, at 4:22 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> A riddle all right, Barry, Doug. Maybe not the lettering, the words? 13 of
>> them: 4, 2, 3, 1, 3. This after I sought an acrostic and thought to see a
>> sort of ‘still’ anagram but no - 2 i’s, not 2 l’s.
>> Ah, now I have it: an in-line acrostic or whatever the tech term is.
>> t h e m i n i m a l s e t
>>
>> Bill
>>
>> On Sat, 28 Sep 2019 at 4:14 am, Barry Alpert <
>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for the "prompt", Doug. I can't quite name or identify your
>>> "formal constraint" but being aware of Georges Perec's novel without the
>>> letter "e", A VOID, I cannot help but notice 5 appearances of "e" in your
>>> first line. Then only one appearance of "e" in each of the next 3 lines,
>>> all at the end of a word, followed by 4 appearances in the last line,
>>> though not in the last word of the last line. Each of the vowels appear,
>>> including even "y" if one wants to make an exception for that letter.
>>> Still, I can't "name" your "constraint" on the basis of that evidence. Can
>>> I request another hint? Barry
>>>
>>> On Thu, 26 Sep 2019 11:18:40 -0600, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks all; it stayed short because of a formal constraint I was hoping
>>> Barry might notice. Still had to find the words….
>>>>
>>>> Doug
>>>>
>>>>> On Sep 25, 2019, at 12:01 PM, Sheila Murphy <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Oh, how welcome this is, Doug. I will keep practicing what this
>>> beautiful
>>>>> passage suggests. It involves striving toward an ideal. Very crystalline
>>>>> and fluid at once. Sheila
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 10:21 AM Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> take heed each moment
>>>>>> invoke now
>>>>>> inhabit minute acts
>>>>>> live
>>>>>> see every thing
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>
>
>Douglas Barbour
>[log in to unmask]
>https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
>Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
>Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>Listen. If (UofAPress):
>
>
> ON THE LAKE
>
> reeds
>
>stalk
>
>reeds
>
> Nelson Ball
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