Mark J. Nelson has posted a very nice note about word-unit palindromes, mentioning that I have been tweeting palindromes-by-word as “@nickmofo” recently.
Nelson points out the paucity of such palindromes in the printed (and digital) record, and the lack of discussion about these. There are a few famous palindromes of this sort, including one that he mentions, “You can cage a swallow, can’t you, but you can’t swallow a cage, can you?” Another fairly well-known one is “King, are you glad you are king?” and another is “So patient a doctor to doctor a patient so.”
Without trying to add too much to this helpful discussion, I’ll note here that some of my tweets are meant to be amusing references to and reworkings of these more famous (for certain values of “famous”) word-unit palindromes:
You can mind a fashion, can’t you, but you can’t fashion a mind, can you?
(Oct 28, 2011)You can touch my bear, can’t you, but you can’t bear my touch, can you?
(Oct 25, 2011)Mister President, are you glad you are president, mister?
(Nov 28, 2011)So stiff a doctor to doctor a stiff so.
(Nov 27, 2011)
In case some of my palindromes seem more inscrutable than others, I’ll also note that my output includes tweets that pertain to things I saw (a VCR chained to a fence near MIT) and events that I attended (a poetry reading by Doug Nufer).
As a teacher, ‘You can mind a fashion, can’t you, but you can’t fashion a mind, can you?’ rings many bells.
You can get some interesting results with storytelling using epanodos at the level of sentences. The trick here is the strategic use of pronouns.
Readers often don’t even notice what you’re doing.