Palindrome Poems

A palindrome is word, phrase, or other text whose letters spell the same backward and forward. Some well-known examples are MADAM I’M ADAM, and A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL, PANAMA!

A word palindrome is made when the words (rather than the letters) of text read the same forward and backward, as in SO PATIENT A DOCTOR TO DOCTOR A PATIENT SO (one of my personal favorites).

A line palindrome is when the individual lines of a text make a palindromic sequence. Notice how the following poem by James A. Lindon reads identically from the first line to the last as it does from the last to the first. (It's from Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language (1967)). I think it is amazing how an identical line changes it’s meaning completely from one end of the poem to the other.


Doppelgänger

Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush –
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever –
I dared not
(For reasons that I failed to understand),
Though I knew I should act at once.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching
Night after night.
Night after night
He came, and I saw him crouching,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone –
Though I knew I should act at once,
For reasons that I failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
A shape amid the shadows,
Blackness that moved.
Peering furtively from behind a bush,
I saw him, for the first time
Entering the lonely house with my wife.


Susan Stewart has a terrific line palindrome poem in her recent book Columbarium, where the form mirrors the action of the poem (a journey in to and out of Hell). This in only an excerpt:

Two Brief Views of Hell

Leaving the fringe of light at the edge of the leaves, deeper, then deeper,
the rocking back and forth movement forward through the ever-narrowing circle
that never, in truth, narrowed beyond the bending going in,
not knowing whether a turn or impasse would lie at the place
where the darkness turned into impenetrability, deep where
no longer could down or up or side to side be known, just the effort
to stay above the water, to keep one spread palm bearing
against the weight and then the other, deeper and deeper.
The way in was easy once it began. The way in was all necessity.
Behind the darkness, more darkness; beneath the water only water.
. . .
Behind the darkness, more darkness; beneath the water only water.
The way in was easy once it began. The way in was all necessity
against the weight and then the other, deeper and deeper
to stay above the water, to keep one spread palm bearing
no longer could down or up or side to side be known, just the effort
where the darkness turned into impenetrability, deep where
not knowing whether a turn or impasse would lie at the place
that never, in truth, narrowed beyond the bending going in,
the rocking back and forth movement forward through the ever-narrowing circle.
Leaving the fringe of light at the edge of the leaves, deeper, then deeper.

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So:
The next time I am stuck with a poem that feels half-written, or seeming to end in mid-air, I am going to try completing it as a line palindrome, (simply rewriting what I have in reverse, and putting the two halves together) just to see what different things I might now be able to say. Hopefully it will be something interesting!