Multidirectional Sonnet

I first saw this form or treatment by Mary Lou Healy on Allpoetry.com.
It is not a form it is a technique requiring skill and talent that can be applied to any existing sonnet form.

The sonnet makes sense read first line to last or last line to first.

Example Poem:

The Hand of Time

Whose face is this within my looking glass?
Someone appears with age-etched lines…I ask,
How do the seasons thus so swiftly pass?
I must have drunk from some enchanted flask!

Oh, I remember when all things were new.
They once shone out in future’s ardent glow
It seems my days have dwindled to a few
When did my certain step become so slow?

Buds have blossomed, blown and gone to dust.
Leaves have greened and burned and fallen, all
As nature’s children, living beings must.
Too soon, we heed that urgent beckoning call.

The hand of time will find and gently touch
All things we’ve grown to love so very much.

(c) Mary Lou Healy – August, 2011

 

Acrostic Sonnet

There are several variations of acrostics, the simplest is
a poem where the first characters of each line spell out
a word, name, phrase or sentence.
One can design an acrostic using any existing form,
or no form at all.  That does not thereby create a new
form, but is merely application of a device.
Note:  In the following example I used a Supersonnet form
Then selected letters that spelled words with the number
of characters as the stanza have line.
Black Friday Shopping
The crowd was an avalanche coming in.
Event promotion: a circus it seemed.
Less time was spent preparing, staff was thin.
Leaving unspent coupons was quite undreamed.
The parking lot was now afloat with cars.
Hello! The drunks are falling out of bars
Especially to see the dancing girls
Machine precisioned bonnets hid their curls.
The stock boys were an army through the store.
Here stands the boss, a monument to glitz.
Employees hide their hair more than their tits.
You know which stumbling drunks want to see more.
Liquor, and candy-canes donned cloaks of foil.
Instant rebates were blooming on each aisle.
Kiosk sales pitches bubbled to a boil.
E-mail and flyer ads made shoppers smile.
Inventory flew through door through the night,.
This all because the voting turned out right.