Retrograde verse is "poetry that is metrically and syntactically viable when read both forwards and backwards, word by word".Leslie Lockett (2016), "Oswald's versus retrogradi: A Forerunner of Post-Conquest Trends in Hexameter Composition", in Rebecca Stephenson and Emily V. Thornbury (eds.), Latinity and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Literature (University of Toronto Press), p. 158.
It is a difficult verse form. There are examples of retrograde verse in Latin from the classical, late antique and medieval periods.Leslie Lockett (2003), "The Composition and Transmission of a Fifteenth-Century Latin Retrograde Sequence Text from Deventer", Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 53(1), p. 118 and n. 67. Medieval examples include:
Centum concito by Oswald the Younger Terrigene bene nunc laudent by Oswald the Younger Book VI of the Quirinalia of Metellus of TegernseeDaniela Mairhofer, "Germany and Austria", in Francesco Stella, Lucie Doležalová and Danuta Shanzer (eds.), Latin Literatures of Medieval and Early Modern Times in Europe and Beyond: A Millennium Heritage (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2024), pp. 82–83. Tu tibi displiceas Me merito censo minimam Patribus hec omnibus by John of Garland Lebuine confessorum, a 15th-century sequence from the Lebuïnuskerk, Deventer __NOTOC__ See also Reversible poem
References
Further reading
External links Latin Retrograde Verse: Puzzles for the Textual Editor and Literary Historian