Reversible Poetry

April is national poetry month so I’ll be doing three posts on poetry this week.  The first is on a poetic form that I just learned about — the reverso.  Marilyn Singer not only uses this form in her book Mirror Mirror, she actually created the reverso.  

In a reverso, you read the lines in one order in the first half of the poem.  The second half of the poem has the same lines in reverse order.  The only things that you can change are capitalization and punctuation.

Ideally, the meaning is often very different, often ironically so.  To see what I mean, read this poem from Mirror Mirror.  

 

Have Another Chocolate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally,  I thought this form looked impossibly difficult but decided to try writing a very short reverso.  I can’t say that this is any good, but I did manage to accomplish the reverse meanings.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, please.  Go read some good poetry and be inspired to write!

–SueBE