Experimental Poetry 7

6/5/19

In this article, I show how to make a poem where you read the poem as you usually would, but when you rotate the poem (or your head) 180 degrees it reveals another poem.

To accomplish this, we need to know how to write text in HTML not only upside down but upside down and backwards. Doing this with some letters is easier than others, for example the letters l, o, s, x, and z. Doing this with some letters or numbers or characters may be totally impossible. In some cases we have to settle for reasonable approximations. I believe the following accomplishes this idea pretty well for the standard lowercase letters a through z that are the characters typically used in poems.

regular text	upside down and backwards	HTML
a	ɐ	ɐ
b	q	q
c	ɔ	ɔ
d	p	p
e	ǝ	ǝ
f	ɟ	ɟ
g	ƃ	ƃ
h	ɥ	ɥ
i	ᴉ	ᴉ
j	ɾ	ɾ
k	ʞ	ʞ
l	l	l
m	ɯ	ɯ

     

regular text	upside down and backwards	HTML
n	u	u
o	o	o
p	d	d
q	b	b
r	ɹ	ɹ
s	s	s
t	ʇ	ʇ
u	n	n
v	ʌ	ʌ
w	ʍ	ʍ
x	x	x
y	ʎ	ʎ
z	z	z

Let's now look at a poem created using this idea. Here I demonstrate this idea by combining my Haiku 135 and Haiku 175.

distinct purple bruise ɹǝɥʇo ɥɔɐǝ ǝǝs ǝʍ
the boxer dances lovely sǝlƃƃoƃ ɹno ɥƃnoɹɥʇ ʞool ǝʍ sɐ
with graceful rough arms uos ʎɯ ɥʇᴉʍ ƃuᴉɯɯᴉʍs

Note that the "hidden" text doesn't have to be only at the end of a line, but can be embedded in the lines. I demonstrate this variation using my Freeverse 73.

the grateful uoos ooʇ ʇsol candle 
burns ɹǝɥʇoɯ lnɟᴉʇnɐǝq ʎɯ ɟo with impossible purples 
and glistening ǝɯ spuᴉɯǝɹ ʇᴉ last words 

Perhaps using italics one can emphasize the embedded one some more, like

the grateful uoos ooʇ ʇsol candle 
burns ɹǝɥʇoɯ lnɟᴉʇnɐǝq ʎɯ ɟo with impossible purples 
and glistening ǝɯ spuᴉɯǝɹ ʇᴉ last words 

Feel free to find better HTML or methods to create upside down and backwards characters, and please credit statisticool.com if you use this idea.

Update on better methods

Mahlon from Martini.nu provided some scripting to accomplish this in a much more efficient way using jQuery. One can just enter the text for the second poem in as regular text, and the script makes it upside down and backwards, without the user having to type in the HTML to get the special characters. Please "View Source" on this webpage to see how the below was done:

distinct purple bruise we see each other
the boxer dances lovely as we look through our goggles
with graceful rough arms swimming with my son

Almost a minute after communicating this, Mahlon figured out that using CSS for this is much easier and efficient. I show how to do this in the source code.

distinct purple bruise we see each other
the boxer dances lovely as we look through our goggles
with graceful rough arms swimming with my son

Thanks for reading.

---

For poetry, I recommend:

• High Quality Every Day Carry (EDC) Bolt Action Pens & Pencils by Bastion. Use discount code JS20 to get 20% off!
• Shop at The Poet Life store

Please show me a randomly selected poem