Write a Rhopalic: As Easy As 1, 2, 3. . . .

 

Today's Snack: On ONE piece of bread put TWO slices of bologna and THREE slices of cheese followed by FOUR rings of fresh cucumber and FIVE small dots of mayonnaise. Then top with another slice of bread, and eat and enjoy with a glass of milk!

 

--------------------

 

Supplies:

 

Scratch paper and pencil

 

Plain white paper and markers or colored pencil

 

 

           

A rhopalic (pronounced "row-PAL-ik") is a poem or sentence that balloons. Each word has one more letter or one more syllable than the word before.

 

Usually, the first word of a rhopalic verse has one letter . . . the second word has two letters . . . the third word has three letters . . . and so on.

 

But you can get the same rhopalic effect by writing a sentence in which the first word has one syllable . . . the second word has two syllables . . . and so on.

 

Here's one in which every word has one more letter, by Dmitri Borgmann:

 

"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting;

 

nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing

 

indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications'

 

incomprehensibleness."

 

 

Wow! Those are some big words. It just means that doctors often have bad handwriting, but pharmacists can figure out what they mean when they're filling a drug prescription.

 

Go back over that sentence and write the number of letters on top of each word. How many letters are there in the last word?

 

You probably will only want to do five or six words, but if you can do more, great!

 

What makes a rhopalic extra fun is if you can also make it into a shape poem. Let's take the shape of a Christmas tree. Can you write a rhopalic with the one-letter word on top, the two-letter word right beneath it, the three-letter word right beneath that, and on to the bottom of your "tree"? Come up with at least five words; the more, the merrier, but it gets hard because it has to be a real sentence, not just words.

 

It will look just like a pointy evergreen tree!

 

A good way to get started is to list words that have just one, two or three letters. There aren't that many:

 

One letter:

I

A

Can you add more? ______________________

 

Two letters:

am

do

in

or

is

us

go

to

at

it

of

an

on

no

so

oh

he

we

Can you add more? _____________________________

 

Three letters:

boy

see

cat

bat

she

can

the

egg

and

let

run

sat

you

dog

cow

now

her

his

fly

for

nap

yes

red

has

dry

one

hop

sit

ten

say

met

top

not

old

all

are

ago

sea

lot

big

low

nut

eye

did

but

may

day

fun

What others can you add? ____________________________

 

 

Once you have the first three words, you have a lot more words to choose from, to complete your sentence, because there are a LOT of four- and five-letter words.

 

Now write your rhopalic on the scratch paper. Once you get it to the point where you like it, then switch to the nice, blank paper, and use colored markers or colored pencils to write it in the shape of a Christmas tree. Decorate it and make it into a Christmas card for someone very special!