Beyond the Palindrome: Aelindromes

Hello friends!

Something a bit different this week. Here’s my article, Beyond the Palindrome: Aelindromes, in its entirety.

Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider supporting my work by purchasing either The Robots of Babylon or my new omnibus edition Knit Ink (and Other Poems).)

Alternatively, buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

BEYOND THE PALINDROME: AELINDROMES

Why did the palindrome cross the road?

To get a map a mate got.

What did the palindrome say to the sci-fi geek?

To bore not one man, name not one robot.

How does a palindrome draw a pyramid?

A zig. Now one zag. — Gaze now on Giza!

I’m Anthony Etherin and I write palindromes. A lot of them. Possibly too many — it is, alas, an obsession. I am unable to read a line of text without immediately rereading it in reverse — always on the lookout for the next Great Discovery.

One day, twelve long palindrome-filled years ago, I set myself the task of composing a palindromic sonnet inspired by the work of Albert Einstein. I am a formalist poet, and the prospect of combining classical prosody with my palindromic obsession was too enticing to pass up. (The sonnet, by the way, features in my book Knit Ink (and Other Poems) (Deep Vellum, 2024), alongside many other combinations of traditional poetic forms and alphabetical wordplay constraints.)

I began composing the sonnet as I would any themed, long-form palindrome: I made a list of words associated with Einstein and rewrote these words backwards, searching for seeds of inspiration: “Sprawl”, when reversed, gives us “warps”. “Time” gives us “emit”. “Relative” gives us “vital”. There was plenty to work with.

Nonetheless, I lamented the fact that the man himself could not be namechecked. Sure, “centre blast” gives us “Albert” — and might, perhaps, evoke supernovae — but there was no fitting “Einstein” into the sonnet, despite my desperate attempts.

It was during these desperate attempts that I chanced upon the discovery that would lead me to the invention of the aelindrome. Alongside my palindrome obsession, I possess an equally strong fascination with anagrams; so, jumbling letters up comes as naturally to me as reading in reverse. For reasons unknown, as I reread Einstein’s name, these two preoccupations manifested simultaneously, until I found myself reading “Einstein” reversed not by letter, but by pairs of letters:

Ei-ns-te-in <—> in – te – ns – ei

Intense I! Another obsession was born, and with it my first “palindrome by pairs” (as I would come to call them):

Intense, I am Einstein!

[In]—[te]—[ns]—[e, I]—[am]*—[Ei]—[ns]—[te]—[in!]

(*Note that the central palindromic “pivot” — like the d in “radar” — here consists of two letters.)

Over the years, many more have followed:

By ruins, trees rest, in ruby.

In past love, half have lost pain.

A drone, lost, lay, as by a last, lone road.

We don’t desire a president — do we?

Enjoying this new toy, my next step was to increase the “unit of palindromism” — leading to palindromes by triples:

May disorder wonder word dismay.

Poetry youths — You try Poe.

and palindromes by quartets:

Verse, slow, moves lovers.

Ravens’ age spins a grave.

I experimented very little beyond quartets. As may be clear from the above examples, the larger the “unit of palindromism”, the more palindromes tend towards the look, feel, and compositional method of word-unit palindromes. Quartets felt like a healthy place for this new obsession to end.

Only it didn’t end.

As a Physics graduate and keen mathematician, I had for years been looking for ways to combine mathematics and poetry. Mathematics is poetry, after all. This new fascination of mine, it transpired, would lend me the opportunity.

Palindromes, palindromes by pairs, and palindromes by triples share something in common: While their “units of palindromism” are different, in each case the palindromic unit remains consistent throughout the palindrome.... But consider the following line:

Melody: a bloody elm.

Here, we begin with a straightforward palindrome: The “m” of “Melody” reflects as the “m” of “elm”. But for the second palindromic unit, the palindrome switches to a palindrome by pairs — the “el” of “Melody” remaining intact upon its reversal in “elm”. For the third unit, the line mutates to a palindrome by triples, with the “ody” of “Melody” reappearing in “bloody”. Finally, the centre of the palindrome (the “pivot”) presents the four-letter unit “a blo”:

[M]1—[el]2—[ody]3—[a blo]4—[ody]3—[el]2—[m]1

The line, therefore, is a kind of meta-palindrome — its palindromic units are themselves a numerical palindrome: 1234321.

I named this invention the “heterogeneous palindrome”, to distinguish it from those palindromes whose palindromic unit is homogeneous (palindromes, palindromes by pairs, etc.), but later, on the advice of a friend, I changed this somewhat overly technical name to the jazzier aelindrome (my initials, AE, merged with the word “palindrome”).

By convention, I subtitle each aelindrome after the forward half of its underlying numerical palindrome, up to and including the “pivot”. Thus, “Melody: a bloody elm” is an “aelindrome in 1234”.

In the nearly-twelve years since inventing the form, I have composed numerous aelindromes, often taking inspiration from famous mathematical constants such as pi, Euler’s number, and the golden ratio. (Irrational numbers such as these are the most fun, lacking uniformity and thus keeping me on my toes….)

For me, the pleasure of constrained poetry, and of alphabetical wordplay in general, comes in the unusual phrasings and slanted reality that the constraint invites. Those familiar with palindromes will know that they have a certain feel, a certain voice — as do anagrams. In the aelindrome, we find a voice somewhere between that of palindromes and anagrams — yet thoroughly its own.

THE DALE AND THE DREAM 
(Aelindrome in 12341234123412341234)

Melody, abloom,
treads a dale
in gloomy March.

A season,
and he abandons
a search.

May, looming,
leads a dream
to a bloody elm….