Syllables Inspiring Thought
My poem, Miscommunication, is an acrostic and more. I decided see if I could play with the broken-down syllables in the title throughout the poem. Why not?
Miscommunication
Mistakes infect
computer logic, trading creed for speed,
ammunition queued, context preloaded
nitrogen flagged, filling frost with force
cables pulling freight farther than voice
invention parsing, plot purged.
Denote
miscommunication (noun)
- A failure to communicate ideas or intentions clearly or accurately, resulting in misunderstanding between people.
- An instance where a message is incorrectly received, interpreted, or conveyed.
I wrote the poem Miscommunication for a writing contest on AllPoetry. It’s a site I learned about a few years after starting this blog. At first, I worried about sharing my work there. I feared it might pull attention away from this space I had invested so much time in building. Instead, the variety of prompts has breathed a new vein of creativity into my writing. I just need to be more intentional about cross-posting some of my favorite contest pieces here as well.
The Rules
Sometimes the contest rules are simple. For this one, the challenge was to choose a seven-syllable word and write a poem about it. The only other requirement was seven lines to match the syllable count of the word. I could do that.
Me being me, of course, I decided that was not quite enough. I added a few extra rules of my own, just to make it interesting.
Adding My Own Rules
My extra rules were to break the chosen word down syllable by syllable. I built each line around one of those sounds. I always kept them in the same sequence as the original word. Then I added one more rule for myself: the words had to be as concrete as possible.
It occurred to me that this structure might even lend itself well to a future contest.
Birth of a Poetic Form: The Syllabilly
Because, apparently, I don’t know when to stop adding rules, a new poetic form was born. The Syllabilly starts with one multi-syllable word of your choice. Break that word down syllable by syllable, then write a poem where each line includes a word that carries the next syllable in sequence. The number of lines in the poem matches the number of syllables in the original word.
And since you know me, I couldn’t leave it there. Those syllable words should be as concrete as possible, keeping the poem grounded in real, tangible imagery.
Sound-based structure meets meaningful detail, with just enough challenge to make it fun.
