A feline response to that ''god dog'' thing ...

Language nerd that I am, this recent Wall Street Journal piece on palindromes got me all wide-eyed and hopeful for a minute. London writer Frank Gray explores “palindromania,” an affliction marked by the compulsive desire to flip sentences from back to front.

The real challenge, of course, is making sure those sentences read exactly the same in both directions, like the famous “Madam, I’m Adam” line said to have been uttered — in English — by the First Man to the bewildered First Woman whom God had just Ingeniously Crafted from the rib bone Adam needed less than he needed a Girlfriend.

Anyway, Gray opens with an example of “that rarity, the bilingual palindrome,” but here it is:

“Todo tipo = o pit o dot”

Not cool. Never mind the cheating equals sign in the middle … the Spanish makes sense (”all types”) but the English? “o pit o dot?”

I got a better one:

“Si, si senor,” drones Isis.

It’s bilingual, it’s a complete sentence and it makes sense. As for the asymmetrical tilde over the first ‘n’, that’s okay because I, um, referenced an ancient Egyptian goddess, and that offsets it. The punctuation doesn’t count either.

Gray also refers to an epic 1,500 word construct that begins with, “A man, a plan, a caret, a ban, a myriad, a sum, a lac…” and ends with “a calamus, a dairy man, a bater, a canal – Panama.” Impressive length, but still just a laundry list of I’ll-take-your-word-for-it weirdness.

Straight-up poetry is the only way to go. Most palindromic poems just reverse the word order, like this anonymous piece:

—————————

Mornings

fresh and clear

makes sunrise spectacular

with birds chirping

- GLORIOUS -

chirping birds with

spectacular sunrise makes

clear and fresh

mornings.

—————————

…while some work on the letter level, like this one — my contribution to a small but growing body of recorded mental masturbation:

—————————

Never one — lots.

No welt, tipsy bee’s mattress!

Adios, el bong!

Items I knit: solar bocci, ozone.

Can a cenozoic cobra

lost in kismet ignoble

(so I’d assert, Tam)

see by spittle won?

Stolen?

Or even…

—————————

And it makes perfect sense!