Both Ways Now (3.11.21)

This post is not about Judy Collins or 60s folk rock music.  Rather, it's about poems that can be read in two directions--forward and backward.

Our W@1 colleague, Bob Cumming, suggested this for a project, which I shared with the group at last week's salon, along with a promise to give it some more thought and a posting here, for your benefit.  So here goes.

First, the project.  What you're asked to do is to write a poem which can be read first line to last as well as last line to first.  So if you're hyperventilating about now, be assured that the poem does NOT have to be able to be read first word to last, last word to first, much less first letter to last, and last to first, as in:

                                    Able was I ere I saw Elba

That still leaves a challenge.  You'd be cheating to write a simple list poem, a la Whitman, for this project.  In other words, you can't write a poem whose lines begin with the same words (e.g., "I sing") over and over again.  No, my friends, that would be too easy!

Lest we forget the Myers Dictum ("A poem must move, a poem must go somewhere."), the forwards/backwards poem you write must progress in some way: logically, chronologically, narratively, dramatically, descriptively from one line to the next . . . and back again.  Ideally, it will reach some kind of conclusion going both ways.

Do I have any examples of this?  Not really.  I do have a poem, written long ago, whose story unfolds backwards first, then forwards, starting at about the middle of the poem.  In a nod to Benjamin Button, I guess.  And it can be read last line to first, although it breaks the rule about not listing (i.e., the repeated line openings).  

Anyway, good luck with this project.  Here's my not-quite-appropriate example.

Floral, Neé Ramondino

And then she was nothing but a passionate idea

And then she completed her last will and testament

And then she filled her pen with new black ink

And then she rummaged for something to write with

And then she poured herself a drink

And then she cried out in fear & anguish

And then she sold all her earthly goods

And then she built houses to hold all her earthly goods

And then she gathered earthly goods, wildly

And then she became rich through cash and securities

And then she became President of the Bank

And then she proved to be a mistress of finance

And then she took a job as a teller at the Bank

And then she graduated from the little business college

And then she took courses in bookkeeping and accountancy

And then she decided to attend the little business college

And then she asked herself, “Well, what now?”

And then she hadn’t a care in the world, not the whole world

And then she changed her name from Ramondino

And then she announced that he was a woman

And then he poured himself a drink

And then he let down his lovely dark hair & cried

And then he looked into the mirror with dismay

And then he came home a mess of motivations

And then he said to himself “This is not me, not me.”

And then he begot children and children upon children

And then he married a consumer and well done

And then he met his childhood sweetheart consumer

And then he decided to go to the Mall

And then he was restless, lonesome, and lurid

And then he appeared, like Jesus, from nowhere

And then he worked for some time as a hack

And then he ran away to the city untested, untried

And then he was where was it, again?

And then he was

And then a kind of passion, an idea, a man