Hearken, now, and listen close!

Question

Hearken, now, and listen close; I have so much to tell.
Now lend an ear and do your job; you surely will excel.
To find my hidden message, gaze on every word herein.
While skimming through it might be fast, you'll miss the quiet gem.

How vitally important are the details of this verse;
examining them closely is the task to take on first.
And once they've been digested, one may feel the need to snooze;
now please reject that feeling and keep minding p's and q's.

Time and time again, you need to squelch the urge to rush.
I know that if you get too lax, you'll miss some clues and such.
So look at each word carefully; just read them one-by-one.
My friend, if every word's perused, your work is almost done!

I know that all this vigilance may start to vex or chafe.
So here's a hint to help you out and keep you feeling safe:
Some people say that punctuation rules are absolute.
Ill-use of them is abject and quite low, there's no dispute.

Now, as you keep perusing, you may find a common theme.
Getting down and dirty is the answer, it may seem.
Find every hidden message in the fine points of the text.
Rush to do your job, and quiz specific aspects next.

Oh, lazy folk will squawk at grammar law misapplication,
giving strong opinions of strict laws of punctuation.
Many nix all joy in words, subscribing to this faction;
in point of fact you might say it's a capital infraction.

Every word's important in this lengthy, rambling prose.
Altering just one could lose the message that's enclosed;
please examine hard and quick the verbiage herein.
'Cause every word's important to the puzzle that it's in.

Here's the quest that's put before you, puzzler and chum:
locate the mystery unknown; to languor don't succumb.
Search through all the text to see what's shrouded here among
the words you may enjoy or may prefer to leave unsung.

Thus far, you'll think not much was said about this work's solution;
so you'll obtain it straight right now, without any dilution:
you want a pair of words portraying you, my puzzling buddy!
And no quick fix can find it! No, just vim and lots of study!

Zest is what you'll have to have as these two words you seek;
as said before, the phrase describes a quirky puzzle geek;
just make a guess, go check your work; you'll see if it is right;
for after all, it's sure that you'll excel; you're very bright!

As fin'lly this verbose creation's coming to a close,
please acquiesce to take my thanks for suff'ring through my prose --
my urge to wax poetic may be tiresome to some,
but still, it's rather jazzy, if your brain is not yet numb.

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What two-word phrase is hidden in the poem above?

Answer 1

The two word phrase hidden quite cleverly in this long passage is

PUZZLE FIEND.

Which I reckon I am! :-D

This word was hidden in this puzzle in the following way:

In each stanza of four lines, all the letters of the alphabet are present, except one. In the first, P is missing. In the second, U is missing. Continuing to determine each missing letter gave me the string PUZZLEFIEND. It was easy to figure out the phrase PUZZLE FIEND from that.

The lines that gave it away were

In the third stanza:

So look at each word carefully; just read them one-by-one.
My friend, if every word's perused, your work is almost done!

And in the seventh stanza:

Every word's important in this lengthy, rambling prose.
Altering just one could lose the message that's enclosed;

An additional hint that I missed. Thanks Sabre for finding the clue that was craftily embedded into the puzzle

The "capital infraction" phrase in the puzzle was a big giveaway. All the capitalized letters in the puzzle spell out HINT WHAT IS MISSING FROM EACH STANZA.

Answer 2

Wrap-up: The Making Of Hearken now, and listen close

This is not a solution to the puzzle, but provides notes from its poser. This type of answer has been approved by the community.

CAUTION: This post contains spoilers for the puzzle.

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Being familiar with

lipograms,

I thought it would be fun to create a puzzle containing them. I thought I could create a story where each paragraph

left out a certain letter,

and those letters combined to provide the solution.

But then I realized that, especially with less-common letters, it wouldn't always be obvious

which letter was being excluded.

This led me to the realization that every paragraph would have to

contain every letter of the alphabet, except the one being excluded.

Being an aficionado of rhyme and poetry, I decided to create the puzzle in verse.

I initially thought that the puzzle might be too difficult without any hints, so I decided to build a hint into the puzzle by making the

first letter of every line combine to provide the hint.

Partway through, I realized that would be too difficult, so instead I just made it

all the uppercase letters,

which proved to be a little more manageable.

I came up with a phrase that I thought would be a good solution to the puzzle, and then got to work.

I found some online resources, including:

A rhyming dictionary

(this was useful in helping to find rhymes to complete each stanza)

A thesaurus

(this was useful when I needed a word, but it contained the "forbidden" letter; I used a synonym without that letter instead)

Lists of words containing Q, X, Z, and J (these were helpful in finding not-too-obscure words that would "use up" these letters so that I could get every letter into the stanza)(words like "just, enjoy, equal, quiet, quite, quick, fix, text, excel, lazy, gaze, puzzle)

I set up a spreadsheet in Excel that would

count the number of each letter in a paragraph, and tell me which letters did not yet appear.

Then I started composing the rhymes. I was somewhat constrained by the requirement to

have the uppercase letters spell out the hint,

but I could be a little flexible in that regard by abusing punctuation -- especially semi-colons.

I didn't have a clear idea of what the poem was going to contain when I began -- I just kind of "winged it." I noticed after about 4 stanzas that the subject matter was becoming a little redundant, so I started trying to change it up a little, by leaving some oblique hints.

When beginning each new stanza, I tried to

get a number of words containing less-common letters like J, Q, V, X, and Z

into the first couple of lines, so that I wasn't struggling to

cram too many letters in at the end.

When I got to the second stanza, I realized I had a challenge ahead of me, because I needed to

include every letter except U, which means I needed to figure out a way to get Q in there without an accompanying U. There are a few words that have Q without U, but none is particularly common, and they would stick out like a sore thumb.

I eventually came up with the idea of

referring to the letter itself, in the common phrase, "mind your P's and Q's."

I think it worked out quite well.

It probably took about 4 hours over the course of an evening to construct all 11 stanzas. I revised things several times until I was satisfied with the content, metre, and rhymes.

I learned afterward that I didn't need to build the hint into the puzzle (although I still think it added something to the puzzle). It was originally solved without the hint, which was only discovered after the fact. People on this site are good! (Although in retrospect, it probably wasn't as hard as I thought, either.)