for my wife, Patricia Schorb
Poe wrote a riddling good acrostic once.
DAvies turned trick into a feeling tribute
BeTh could take pride in. Well, I’m not a dunce.
YouR servant, you will find, is a glib brute,
ma’am. I am able, any time I choose,
to do aCrostics cleverer than theirs,
Presto! It is the nature of my muse,
PatriciA—money as to millionaires.
Now here iS what to look for: scan the page—
then, if you Can’t see anything, try counting
inward, from High to low. Soon a presage
of what is to cOme, love, will form, this mounting
as you proceed. Remember, it’s a name.
Patricia SchorB? You got it! Here’s to fame!
About E.M. Schorb
E. M. Schorb has published several collections of poetry, including Time and Fevers: New and Selected Poems (AuthorsHouse, 2004), which was chosen as a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award winner; A Fable & Other Prose Poems (2002), Murderer's Day (1998), winner of the Verna Emery Poetry Prize; 50 Poems (1987); and The Poor Boy and Other Poems (1975); and a chapbook, Like the Fall of Rome and Other Humanitarian Disasters (1980).
He is also the author of two novels: Paradise Square, which won the International eBook Award Foundation's Frankfurt eBook Award for "Best Fiction work originally published in eBook form," and Scenario for Scorsese (both Denlinger's Publishers, 2000).
His poems and prose have appeared in Best American Fantasy 2007, as well as The American Scholar, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Chattahoochee Review, Chelsea, The Literary Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, The Texas Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Yale Review, among other journals.
His honors include Fellowships in Literature from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the North Carolina Arts Council, and grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Carnegie Fund for Authors, and Robert Rauschenberg & Change, Inc. (for illustrations in The Poor Boy).
He lives in Mooresville, North Carolina.
