PAD Day 10: A,B,C,D,E,F,G...

Today I'm giving props to my PAD buddy Vince Gotera. Vince is a professor of English the University of Northern Iowa, editor of the North American Review, and a rather accomplished guitarist as well. We met online during last year's PAD Challenge, for which he was one of the daily guest judges. Vince's Day 9 "visual" poem is an extremely clever piece in the shape of a guitar, in the voice of a guitar.  He also posted  a visual poem by his poetic colleague Thomas Alan Holmes, and two by concrete poet Jan Hodge - all of them are very inventive and make my little Fibonacci from yesterday pale by comparison. You can find them here.

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo:
(1) Write a poem whose title begins with "How..." (it can even be a word beginning with those letters, like "Howling" or "Howard"), and 
(2) Write an "abecedarian" - poem that uses the letters of the alphabet in order in some way. The classic abecedarian uses 26 words, each successive word starting with each letter of the alphabet in order, A to Z. I've written a few of these, and they are tough to do well - having it make sense is the biggest challenge with such a strict format.  This one I wrote is a little easier, with 26 lines, each starting with a successive letter.  I chose an entirely appropriate topic too, inspired by watching my young granddaughter's intellectual development.

How a Toddler Learns the Alphabet

A

Book

Carried around,

Druidic runes on

Each page,

Fascinates her.

Grandpa reads, she

Hears words.

In time,

Just a little

Knowledge starts to

Loosen the code:

Mmmm goes the M,

Nothing is rounder than

O.

Picking them out,

Quick study,

Reading's not far away:

Snaky S goes ssss,

Tongue-staccato T.

Under the influence of

Vocabulary, growing

Wiser every day.

X marks the spot where a

Young mind consumes with

Zeal.