Crab Talk

"When we walk backwards, we move forwards"- Douglas Hofstadter

What do the following words have in common? Hannah, Madam, Level.
Or even more interestingly the following statements:

"Was it a car or a cat i saw?"
"If I had a hi-fi."
"Never odd or even."
"Red rum, sir, is murder!"

They all read the same whether read forward or backwards; and are all examples of palindromes. Palindromes can be formed with characters eg A, B, C; or with words or even with lines. And the above are examples of character palindromes due to the fact that all the letters are read backwards to give the same meaning.

Examples of word palindromes are:

"Fall leaves after leaves fall"
"First ladies rule the state and state the rule: ladies first"
"Girl bathing on bikini eyeing boy sees boy eyeing bikini on bathing girl"

Here, a word is taken as a single unit, and when each line of sentence is read, last word first, the meaning remains the same. Word palindromes disregard punctuation to retain their meaning while character palindromes disregard spaces between words.

Perhaps the most creative and amusing use of palindromes is the line palindrome as used in the poem 'Doppelganger' by James A Lindon below:

Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush-
Blackness that moved
A shape amid the shadows
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever-
I dared not
For reasons that i failed to understand
Though i knew i should act at once


I puzzled over it, hiding alone
Watching the woman as she neared the gate
He came and I saw him crouching
Night after night
Night after night
He came and I saw him, crouching
Watching the woman as she neared the gate


I puzzled over it, hiding alone-
Though i knew i should act at once
For reasons that i failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever


A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
A shape amid the shadows
Blackness that moved


Peering furtively behind a bush
I saw him for the first time
Entering the lonely house with my wife.


In the beginning of the poem, the husband is with his wife being watched (and knowing this) by another man in the bushes, wondering why he isnt acting to find out the strange man's identity.

The poem is momentarily flipped in the second verse, and now is told from the point of view of the man in the bushes who watched from his hiding place as the husband checked on him every night.


The last three verses are told in the husbands voice again, watching this time the strange man with his wife. The husband remained hiding in the bush knowing he should come out to confront the 'Cuckold' but watching intead as the man went into his house with his wife.


A bit confusing, I guess, but really creative as the poem read forwards and then backwards, the lines changing their meaning slightly to continue a story which had already begun.