Alphabet

Alphabet is one of the most well-known poems of Inger Chtistensen who was broadly considered to be Denmark's most prominent poet. The poem was originally published in 1981 in Danish as alfabet.

"Alphabet" is a book-length poem following the tradition of Abecedarian poems, in which each line begins with the next letter of the alphabet sequentially from A through Z. Each of the poem's fourteen sections of the poem is tied to a letter of the alphabet and the number of lines found in each section is dictated by the Fibonacci sequence.(The first section, "A", has one line. The last section, "N", has 610.)

"Alphabet" has also been called a homonymous poem collection because of its attention to vowel and consonant sounds within lines, stanzas, and across poems; or, a "systematic" poem because the author has created a system of rules to follow. Note that systematic poetry is not a formal mode of poetry, but may be used to describe the writer's process.