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Wednesday, 25 April 2018

Nuts and Bolts: telestich.

You say this word telly-stick,* but, confusingly, it isn't a device for changing channels on a TV when the battery on remote control is dead, but a form of verse.

A telestich is very like an acrostic, but instead of the first letters of the lines making a word, the last letters do.

This is neat, though sadly no one much seems to have got round to writing anything much in telestich form. There's a beautiful very short example by Michael Lockwood that's both an acrostic and a telestich HERE, but an example of a pure telestich has eluded me.

That means I'm going to have to write one myself, I suppose.

Errrk!

Um...gosh, it's jolly awkward...

What an agendA!
Staring through the windoW
Hoping for a lightning-cracK
That will soW
An ideA,
Some glimpse of a pointeR...
...but it's dark, and I'm doomeD.


******************************

Ah well. I'm sure you can do better!

Word To Use Today: telestich. This word comes from the Greek telos, which means end. Stichos means a line. 


*Though some people say tiLESS-tick, apparently.


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