I’ve been so impressed with you Launderers’ poetic abilities in haiku that I am setting you another challenge. Palindrome! The curious art of making sentences read the same backwards as they do forwards. The word palindrome is derived from the Greek palíndromos, meaning running back again. Apparently there are a number of folk out there who dedicate a fair amount of their time working these out. Lawrence Levine wrote a palindromic novel of 31,957 words, Dr. Awkward and Olson in Oslo in 1986.

“In Eden, I,” a poem by Richard Cox published in Word ways takes a traditional palindrome ‘Madam, I’m Adam’ that bit further. Each line reads the same forward and backwards. Here is an excerpt:

Eve. Drowsy Baby’s word. Eve
Madam, I’m Adam
Named under a ban, a bared nude man.
Miss, I’m Cain, a monomaniac. Miss, I’m…
Diamond-eyed no-maid!

Here’s one I made earlier… (Or, more accurately, someone else made it and a mate once told me and for some reason unknown to either them or me, I have remembered it for about 10 years)

I saw desserts, I’d no lemons alas no melon distressed was I.

Your turn!

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