Young Writers Society

The Palindrome?

Please note that none of this is personal, it's just a debate/question/issue I'd like to talk about in regards to the forms of something we've recently encountered on YWS, palindromes.

What is a Palindrome
A palindrome, in general, is something that is read the same forwards and backwards. Poets have taken that and twisted it into you read it "forwards and backwards" but you get a new meaning by reading it 'backwards,' like seeing the mirror actually shows you something new. There are many different types.

Types
The most common on the internet are 'letter' palindromes: "Anna", "Was it a car or a cat I saw," and "racecar."

However, in poetry they are much more diverse which is not so much up for debate, as discussion. Palindromes can be on the level of mirroring stanzas:

"We can be
as happy
as we want
as happy
we can be"

[this could also be considered a 'line-unit' palindrome because the entire line is taken and over the reflection.]

or lines:

"Suddenly I saw
her. There she sat
watching
sat she there, her
I saw suddenly"

[these are also called 'word-unit' palindromes because the individual words of the lines are taken and reflected.]

They are both 'legal' in terms of reflection. Both are easily seen as reversed. The issue comes up with some questions of how to deliver the palindromes to the public.

Examples
Here are a few examples of 'published' palindromes. [At least, I could find them online and they seemed credible, I included sources for you to peruse.]

The 224 Word Palindrome:

Line Palindromes from a place talking about poetic forms:

A stanza palindrome:

Similarities

Between all of them, we see some similar things. The key thing I want to talk about is something the palindromes on here seem to ignore; the reflective point is reflecting. While there is not much to really know about palindromes as poems, and they're really kind of confusing because there aren't many cited examples on the internet, they are mostly universal in that they have a reflective spot.

In the first poem, it is very hard to find. it is actually the "I" the 14th line down.
The next two are both examples which really give away the reflective spot.
The last poem does not have a distinct reflective point but two lines back to back which are the same to show the reflection between lines.

Even in simple palindromes like "Anna" we get reflection points which are either the odd letter out in the middle, or the repetition of a letter right next to itself.

Grammar
Because the first example is a letter palindrome instead of lines, or stanzas ['words-units' and 'line-units'] the lines and stanzas don't have to match. The words don't even have to be the same. There is no need in palindromes to keep the same punctuation, spaces, or anything of the sort as long as it is the same in the essence of its unit backwards and forwards.

Why am I writing this?
Recently on YWS, a few palindromes have shown up, and while they read really well, I feel that they are only half complete. Reading a palindrome should be like reading any other poem, you read it through once straight, and you don't have to fiddle around with anything extra.

To me this is like bagging up the things a customer buys. Even though the item is theirs already, there's still a common courtesy that shops pay them in order to get them out the door.

Format for this Discussion
Well, you say, this should go in a review for the palindromes up on YWS and not bogging down the Poetry Discussion form.

You're probably right but I am running into more and more people on YWS who believe that palindromes can exist as the reflective point being at the end of the poem and a simple instruction "this is a palindrome, read it backwards after you read it forwards" seems to appease them into doing just that.

Personally, I'd also like to see if there is something that I'm missing which you all seem to know/see/read about palindromes which makes it acceptable to only write to the reflective point.

The reason I know it is just to the reflective point is because they don't actually have any mirrored parts. I have not found a palindrome anywhere else that does not include after the reflection. This anomaly has only happened here.

While the first one which showed up did seem to have a reflective idea, it was warped and the words were bluntly changed not matching the spirit of the first line, which means that the lines were new, and it was not a reflection of the idea.

So here's the question I pose to start this topic, should palindromes follow the behavior of having a reflective point?


Wait! I Wanted to Write One!
If you're here for how to write a palindrome, here are two helpful guides:

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Do you mean that any palindromes that doesn't have a reflective point isn't really a palindrome?

If that's the discussion you're trying to start, I think I can end it pretty quickly: No

Of course it shouldn't be constricted to only those with a reflective point or even a completely mirrored one. Even though palindrome poetry takes it's name from the word 'palindrome', which is used to describe words, phrases or even numbers that can be interpreted or mean the same backwards and forwards, Palindrome Poetry is it's own thing entirely. Right?

The idea of palindrome poetry is already pretty limited. Forcing them to have to be written within the exact mindframe as a palindrome would constrict the medium even further.

In my mind, this doesn't seem to need a discussion. But I guess I'm looking at it wrong?

Also, in your examples, I would have included 'The Lost Generation', by Jonathan Reed.



I'm definately no expert on palindromes, in fact they can be quite confusing to read and even harder to write. But I have read a lot of them, and this is what I consider to be the best I have read. I love it.

If we look for a reflective point in it:

work
is more important than
family

Then we'll see that this might be considered the reflective point. Yet, every line within it is doctored to fit within both forward and reverse versions.

When I first came upon this poem, I thought it was from one of the old great poets....but no. It was written by a young college student for a project. That is amazing

Here is a video for it, it's where I first saw it:


Sorry if I'm gushing so much about this poem, I just love it.

@Birkhoff I think this is a really great Palindrome, I totally agree with that. However, notice how in the video the reader actually reads the entire poem front to back and back to front. The reader doesn't just leave it at "Which generation do you belong in?" as you would if you read the poem once through.

While it might be their choice to write it out only once, when we actually transcribe the entire thing, it ends up having the reflective point of "There is hope." with the end statement being the 'mirror' or the transition to 'backwards'.

So while this shows where it began to be just half a mirror, I feel like this is something that has to be read aloud, or give the transcription as everything you say to the audience, which means including the other side of the reflection.

Yes, Palindrome Poems have really become their own thing, but I want to understand what that thing has become. Is it something that unlike typical palindromes they don't require the reflection?

I disagree that it is more work to tack on writing out the reflection. Because you're writing a palindrome, you're already thinking about what the other side will be, what the reverse will read like.

A few reasons why I think that the other side of the reflection should be included are because it is hard to know what type of reflection is being used. Are we reading the same lines [forwads] but back up the poem or are we flipping them so that in the first read through we have the line go words: 1 2 3 4 and in reading it reversed, we read 4 3 2 1? It goes back to talking about palindromes on different levels, words[letters of the words flip], lines[the words in the lines flip], or stanzas[the lines are read back up but read each line forward]? If we don't include the reverse, then our audience won't know for sure which one it is when they first start, they have to experiment. For instance, if you read your palindrome, then read mine [if I only had up to the reflective point as "Lost Generation" does] then it might not make any change to read it backwards.

So while I see how you're saying thinking about it being each word flipped is really constricting, and it's true, that is still a style of palindrome poetry which is out there, just like stanzas flipping and words flipping. The level of difficulty the writer picks is up to them. Should we also leave it up to them to determine if the audience is smart enough to guess first thing if they're flipping words, lines, or stanzas, or should we show them the reverse?

I want more examples of these poems where they incorporate a mirror that says to read it backwards if you have more of them.

[I am so glad we get to talk about this.]

Why wouldn't they read the entire thing front to back? That's the purpose of a palindrome.


I guess, because my own skill and understanding of palindromes are lacking, I prefer only stanzas and lines flipped. Anything beyond that gets so hard to do and would read very convoluted.

Like Dmitri Martin's poem 'Dammit I'm Mad'; it is very impressive that he managed to mirror this piece, especially considering it's size. However, I don't think it's a good read.

The Lost Generation reads very well. It has good descriptive stanzas that get your attention and pulls you into it, flows particulary well considering its a palindrome, and it has two very strong points of view or meanings. One negative and one positive.

If it gets too complicated, the chances of it grabbing my attention fades.


But then, I am not the biggest poetry person, so there are definately other people here you should be discussing with.

Eh. Whatever you call it I like writing the kind that Birkhoff mentioned. I've always thought that specific lingo for poems-- like a haiku vs. the other thing that's like a haiku but not-- were always kind of pretentious to use outside of in-depth analysis, and unconventional for everyday use.

But palindromes aren't something that a lot of people do, so while they might trickle out of the woodwork eventually, @Birkhoff you're my other side of this conversation. Personally I think you are a very credible source of information on palindrome poetry since you've obviously read more of them than I have. I have had a hard time even finding them. You are skilled and you do have a solid understanding of palindromes for your point of view, and I want to understand it/debate with it.

Now then, I completely agree with you that Dammit I'm Mad is really not a great reading it all the way through. It was, however, the only example of a 'word' palindrome I could find. As I've said, I had a pretty hard time actually turning them up.

The Lost Generation does read very well, and it reads even better when you know it is a palindrome, however will that always be the case? With The Lost Generation the author worked into the poem that you had to read it in reverse. That is a tricky thing to do which breaks the third wall between the reader and the writer. I feel like this is why it is acceptable for The Lost Generation to ignore writing out the reverse of the poem along with the forward version, but without that being a part of the poem, I think the poem would have fallen flat submitted to an average literary magazine which didn't recognize it as a palindrome without a note of some sort. Notes aren't included with poems typically when they're published.

Today it seems to be accepted from my point of view that a work must be able to stand alone without any context, or words from the author about it. Having to say that the poem is a palindrome: read it backwards too, seems to take away from the poem's ability to stand alone. As I said, if you can do that in the poem like The Lost Generation Great! More power to you, go ahead and collapse the palindrome into a two sided thing that you don't see the reverse written out for you, let your reader figure it out. However, I'm not sure that if you have to included as a note outside of the text of the actual poem, that you've actually managed to pull off the same affect as The Lost Generation.

@Aley Should I feel like this thread was derived from our conversation the other night?

ddman18 wrote:@Aley Should I feel like this thread was derived from our conversation the other night?

This is something I've wanted to discuss with the poetry people for a while.

Today it seems to be accepted from my point of view that a work must be able to stand alone without any context, or words from the author about it.

Probably for something like palindromes a lot of publishers would include palindrome in the title. So I've seen things that would be titled like Palindrome #1, Palindrome #2, etc. or it could be titled The Lost Generation: A Palindrome. You see the same things with sonnets, haikus and the like.

It really depends on the magazine and publishers whether they publish palindromes or not. If your magazine is known for those experimental forms and word play type stuff, then your reader base would probably pick up on the fact that it's a palindrome even without the title. But it is more than acceptable if you're submitting a palindrome to say so in the cover/query letter.

Some Palindrome thoughts:

First of all usually Palindromes make me angry because they are such a struggle to write. >:(

I think the answer to your question is "it depends!"

I believe that both the word by word and the line by line versions of a palindrome ought to be considered authentic "palindromes" and honestly it is nearly impossible to do a word by word palindrome with some sense-of-readability without changing up the punctuation in the reflection portion. Sometimes the poem is more effective to "force" the reader to read backwards, and it does tend to create a *reveal* moment in the poem whereas if the 2nd half is just written out it's a little less dramatic but may flow better.

I wrote a palindrome about 10 years ago -> here and initially I was very proud of it because it was a "word by word" palindrome rather than just a "line by line" and WOW it took a lot of brainpower to write it that way, but unfortunately it was not received very well. I think sometimes people want "gimmick" poems (or poems that rely heavily on some experimental or unique formatting / theme / device) to be easily understood - they don't necessarily want to trust it beyond the gimmick, but I think that the poem I wrote here is not any more difficult to decipher than your average published free-verse poem - it just takes a little language deciphering. Ideally a palindrome poem's theme has something to do with "mix up / reverse / backwards / change in perceptions" so that the backwards reading feeds into the theme.

One problem with palindromes - a lot of times when they're written in the "line by line" way it feels like people just copy the popular ones they've seen on the internet, and for something that could have a lot of variet, there really isn't much. Usually when I read a palindrome I'm excited, and then realize it looks like a copy of every other palindrome I've read before. Usually the theme goes something like this: "I'm me - > I'm not perfect -> I am struggling -> wow life is tough -> then there's a flip -> I'm great just how I am -> yay for imperfections -> I'm me!" it's a nice message; but I'd like to read some more creative palindromes because I think the form is very under utilized!