mesostich

Mesostich is a form of hidden-message poetry in which the middle letters of consecutive lines, read in order, spell a word or phrase. The term comes from Greek meso meaning middle and stichē meaning line or verse. It is related to acrostics (which use the first letters) and telestichs (which use the last letters) but relies on the center of each line rather than the edges.

Construction and variations: To create a mesostich, a poet determines what counts as the middle character and how to handle line length. When a line has odd length, there is a single central letter; for even-length lines, editors may use the two central letters or adjust spacing to produce a single central letter. The sequence of central letters across the poem forms the hidden message. Some variations take the middle letters of words within lines instead of entire lines, or omit punctuation and spaces before determining the midpoints.

Usage and context: Mesostich appears mainly in experimental poetry and word games rather than in mainstream verse. It is a relatively rare technique, valued for its subtlety and puzzle-like quality. Critics note that legibility depends on the reader’s assumptions about counting methods, so authors sometimes provide explicit signaling or guidance to avoid ambiguity.

Example: A four-line poem could be crafted so that the central letters of each line spell a word such as NOTE, illustrating the mechanic without revealing the lines themselves. In practice, mesostichs invite readers to attend to the poem’s structural inlays as well as its surface meaning.