Hi, and thanks for reading! Today is Monday, so we’re going to talk about poetry.
If you want to go directly to the poetry exercise, and skip all this “recipe blog” backstory, scroll to the next subhead.
Most of the time, I approach this newsletter with other poets’ work in mind. But this week, the Monday poetry prompt is inspired by: me! My new poem, Confessional School, was just published and you may read it in the monthly zine Dharma Direction. If you’re an astrology person, Dharma Direction is for you; if you’re not, it’s still chock-a-block with humor, culinary writing, romance, essays, and, of course, poetry.
I’m very happy to be back in the Dharma Direction zine, and not just because it allows me to self-promote. Below: photo of Hattie when she gets to promote her own work in the Monday poetry newsletter.
Anyhow, the poem I wrote is a variation on palindrome poems or chiastic poems. If you don’t know what a palindrome is, might I suggest reading this Weird Al song?
Palindromes are the same backward and forward; Alina Stefanescu has a great explanation of word-unit and line-unit palindromes in her own blog post about palindromic poetry. Chiastic poetry is similar, but often, when a chiastic poem reaches its point of reversal, the meanings flip, too. The poem might move to unwrite assertions made previously or challenge ideas expressed in first half.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about when I say “changed meanings.” This isn’t a palindrome, but it’s a great example of the principle in action. You might’ve seen this on Instagram (my dad sent it to me and then I saw a billion people share it to their stories, so he’s a trendsetter):
Moving more concretely into the chiastic space, we have this brilliant poem from Alina Stefanescu. It demonstrates how punctuation and homophones can come into play in a palindrome poem. Keep an eye out for the way “no” and “know” function toward the center of this poem:
my father explains why they left me behind when defecting Alina Stefanescu after Hoa Nyugen's "Unrelated Future Tense" You are the same to me. The baby in the photo you were, dark curls we kissed before fleeing. Your mom was pregnant with the one she birthed in America. Your eyes didn't match. One was yellower. And no leaves on the lindens then we didn't know if we'd see you again. We didn't know if we'd see you again and know leaves on the lindens then. One was yellower. Your eyes didn't match the one she birthed in America. Your mom was pregnant with curls we kissed before fleeing. The baby in the photo you were, dark you are. The same to me.
As you see above and can also observe in my own poem, you don’t have to make your two “sets” of lines identical. When you move through a poem, it’s like a landscape. Your perception changes. Your understanding of the best way to navigate it changes. You may drop an article or add a modifier, and that’s totally fine.
Just remember, there’s no pressure. The best palindrome of all time is “oozy rat in a sanitary zoo,” and none of us will ever beat that!
Exercise: Palindrome Poems
You can start with an all-new poem, or you can use a short poem you’ve already written. Incomplete poems and fragments are great for this exercise. Write around twelve lines, to begin with.
Take what you have, and experiment with arranging the lines. If you position one phrase immediately after another, does it change the meaning? If you split a sentence with a line break, does it create something different when you read it in reverse?
Whittle down what you have until you’re left with a very brief poem. Then, pop it in the ol’ duplicator:
Duplicate the lines you’ve written and reverse them, tacking them to the end of the poem. Now, you have a palindrome-in-progress.
Start getting experimental with the punctuation, word choices, and line breaks. Can you swap “cored” for “chord,” “brayed” for “braid,” “illicit” for “elicit”? What happens if you replace “me” and “I” for “you”?
If you’re struggling, it might help to determine what the emotional core of your poem is. Writing toward and away from the central idea can help you shape what you’re composing, and can help you generate new words or phrases to achieve your desired result.
Happy Monday, all, and happy writing. As always, if you’re enjoying this newsletter, please forward it to a friend! I’ll see you tomorrow with a new essay – I’m excited to share it with you.