Hidden meaning encoded in a poem sends the poet to jail
from BBC News:
“Burma poet held for secret insult,” by Steve Jackson
“The Burmese authorities have arrested a well known poet, who published a love poem with a hidden message criticising the country’s military leader. Poet Saw Wai’s work -- titled ‘February the Fourteenth’ -- was published in a Rangoon magazine, The Love Journal. Taken together, the first words of each line read: ‘General Than Shwe is crazy with power.’”
from The Guardian (UK):
“Poet held after coded attack on Burmese leader,” by Ian MacKinnon
“Saw Wai’s seemingly innocuous lines were printed in the weekly Love Journal. But read vertically, the first word of each line forms the phrase ‘Power crazy senior general Than Shwe.’ The issue of the magazine containing the eight-line poem entitled ‘February 14’ was published last month, but the author was only arrested on Tuesday after censorship board officials deciphered the message. The publisher and editor of the magazine, which printed the words under a picture of heart-shaped balloons inscribed ‘I Love You,’ were also questioned.”
More on acrostics and poem-puzzles:
Acrostic poem defined, with links to examples, in our Glossary of Poetic Forms
Abecedarian poem (a specialized kind of acrostic) defined, with an example, in our Glossary of Poetic Forms
“Acrostics --Mystical to Mind-Boggling,” from About.com’s Puzzles Guide Dave Fisher
“Waka Waka Bang Splat!” The World’s First Internet Special-Characters Poem
“Concrete Poetry/VisPo,” Poems take shape on the screen
Comments
An acrostic poem does not alway spell out its subject “in the first letter of each line or stanza.” Check out this acrostic poem by Edgar Allan Poe, where the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the second line, the third letter of the third line, and so forth, spell out the name of SARAH ANNA LEWIS, one of his benefactors, with whom he is said to have had a close platonic relationship.
Edgar Allan Poe
An Enigma
“Seldom we find,” says Solomon Don Dunce,
“Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet -
Trash of all trash! - how can a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff -
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it.”
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles - ephemeral and so transparent -
But this is, now - you may depend upon it -
Stable, opaque, immortal - all by dint
Of the dear names that he concealed within ‘t.