mirror mirror a book of reversible verse

His reVersed poems reverse word by word, which is a little more challenging. Read PJ Perry's reVerse Poems: A Reversible Poetry Collection. Reversible, mirror, or palindrome poems can be created by reversing each line, each word, or even more challenging, each letter.Ī quick search online results in varied instructions and many samples.Ī challenge to try writing a reverso is issued on the Miss Rumphius Effect Blog's Poetry Stretch.Īmy Ludwig VanDerwater has written on reverso each day since she was introduced to the form. Perhaps because, as yet, I had no name for it.Īs I researched reversible poetry, I discovered much interest and many variations on the structure. Trethewey's Native Guard: Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, also contains this poem, as well as others examining grief, but I don't remember noticing the reversible structure when I initially read this poem in this collection. I discovered Myth by Natasha Trethewey in The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing edited by Kevin Young. They can just as easily, powerfully, and effectively turn serious, sad, or current issues on their ends.Īfter my father died last year, I was drawn to poems on grief.

Reversos, however, don't have to be fun and flirty.

Singer's reversos deal with fairy tales, reversing our familiar fictional worlds, creating topsy-turvy reflections. When you read it up, with changes allowed only in punctuation and capitalization it is a different poem.Īccording to her author's note, her first reverso was about her cat. But what if we read them up? That's the question I asked myself when I created the reverso. Singer explains how she created the reverso in response to her own question: This one also focuses on traditional tales. If these poems delight us, we can enjoy more in Singer's second and most recent offering, Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems. We are given many reasons to pause, puzzle, ponder. Reading down and then up again, changes our tales in surprising ways. Portraits of well-known characters shed new light on their stories, relationships, and motives. We are forced to look at the tale from different angles and perspectives. Įach reverso in this collection turns a familiar fairy tale upside down-literally. Marilyn Singer was recently named the winner of the 2015 NCTE Excellence in Poetry for Children Award.Īs soon as I heard the news, I thought about the reverso, a poetic form to which I was introduced through Singer's Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reverso Poems.

Mirror mirror a book of reversible verse