A Palindrome Play on Words

About this poem

This poem, “A Palindrome Play on Words,” is written as an acrostic, in the form of the famous 19th Century palindrome “Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba,” falsely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although he did not actually say those words. It is claimed that this well-known palindrome, that reads the same backward and forward, first appeared in 1848, 27 years after the death of Napoleon and his historic defeat at the battle of Waterloo, his exile in Sant’Elena, his illness, and his eventual death. While recapturing this event in terms of its historic background, this poem takes a lighter, more humorous poetic look at palindromes and the power of an acrostic to merge itself artistically with a palindrome. This poem is written metrically, with a repeating 7-5-6 measure throughout the seven stanzas of the poem. The poem is also written in the format of a poetic Inclusio, with the opening and last lines of the poem being identical, serving as an envelope to “wrap around” the poem and to encourage reflection. Just for fun, try reading this poem forwards and backwards, to see if it makes or maintains sense in both directions of reading — a good exercise to involve both hemispheres of the brain. An observation: This is a “vertical” acrostic poem that contains four autonomous poems in the one poem entitled “A Palindrome Play on Words.” My artist daughter, Kali, describes this composition as a “Poemdrome,” in the sense that the poem when reversed, has the capacity of being another poem, very much like the metaphysical ouroboros, that bites its own tail. more »