Anagram Poems (1 of 2)

Gem panoramas.

Anagram poems are poems that involve some kind of letter-remixing. In the type I’ve seen most often, each line is an anagram of every other line. In the example below, the lines also anagram the title:

“Washington Crossing the Delaware” by David Shulman

A hard, howling, tossing water scene.
Strong tide was washing hero clean.
"How cold!" Weather stings as in anger.
O Silent night shows war ace danger!

The cold waters swashing on in rage.
Redcoats warn slow his hint engage.
When star general's action wish'd "Go!"
He saw his ragged continentals row.

Ah, he stands – sailor crew went going.
And so this general watches rowing.
He hastens – winter again grows cold.
A wet crew gain Hessian stronghold.

George can't lose war with's hands in;
He's astern – so go alight, crew, and win!

Here’s another neat one from Kevin McFadden’s “Eight Anagrams After OuLiPo,” working off a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote. It’s more abstract than the first one, but maybe that’s appropriate to the quote:

“Variations Against the Credo of Raving Saviors”

To be great is to be misunderstood.

I bet it’s true, Emerson. Too bad. God’s

too big to estimate, dress unrobed.

Greatness is to dote, bob, dim out, re-

store, ebb, a too-odd gesture in mist,

to grab onto tidbits (seed, ore, muse)

and gibber. O tides, O meteors, totus

orbis, mein Gott, déesse, art, O doubt,

Tao, dross, bromides, bite tongue! Et

tu, Emerson? So it’s great to be odd, bi-

odegrade into ribs, testtubes. Moo

to be tiger misunderstood, O beast,

O song mistreated. So be it. But doer,

deed are one big orbit. Toss utmost

reason out, it’d better be good. (Miss

most, but so?) A desire to be God inert,

to be soirée absurd, totems doting

in sedate bedroom grottoes. But is

it great to be so misunderstood, be

moot? outside sense? to brag dirt? be

modest bores? to diatribe tongues

tied? Dog mottoes, rabbit neuroses:

sit, be obedient, taste good. Rumors

run aside doom, boost getters, bite

gottens. Bid me adieu. Boots resort

to ties, bodies but to Emerson. Drag

mud in. Obsess. Edit rot. To be great

is not “odd I,” “obstruse me.” To be great

is to resent to be misread, but good.

You can read the rest of McFadden’s “Eight” here.

Word Ways #2.1 featured this anagram poem by Xavier Balilinkinoff, a variant on an earlier work by Dmitri Borgmann. The shorter the base anagram, the less the anagrammatist has to work with, so I find this one pretty impressive (even if “sot” is a dated insult now):

VIOLETS

It’s love

I’ve lost

To Evil’s

Vile sot.

Violet’s

Love ’tis.

Tomorrow: a few variations!