Tag Archives: palindrome

Tuanortsa is a Palindromic poem. A palindrome reads the same from front to back as from back to front. Palindromes in a single word would be level, radar, eye, civic, rotor etc. 

A palindromic poem need not be quite as tricky as turning a word inside out. The lines can simply be mirrored so that the sequence reverses order and the lines read the same from bottom to top as they do from top to bottom. This was presented to me as a poetry exercise. Why it was called Tuanortsa, astronaut spelled backward, makes no sense to me because the word it isn’t a palindrome. Be that as it may, there was only one requirement of the exercise, write a ‘poem’ that makes sense when read, line by line, from bottom up as well as from top down. There should be no fewer than 6 lines but there may be more. Meter and rhyme are at the discretion of the poet.
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1918
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.

NOTE: The single reason that I classified this separately from the Palindrome is that it posits a minimum number of six lines.

Related forms: Palindrome, Trick Poetry

My example

Plan to Have Been (Tuanortsa)

Determine early your life’s goal
Since most of us may choose our role
Leave evidence that you were here.
Give offspring’s offspring cause to cheer.
Disdain the taking of the dole.
Give offspring’s offspring cause to cheer.
Leave evidence that you were here.
Since most of us may choose our role
determine early your life’s goal.

(c) Lawrencealot – October 29, 2014