Howard Bergerson

Howard W. Bergerson at the age of 84

Howard W. Bergerson (born July 29, 1922 in Minneapolis , Minnesota , † February 19, 2011 in Kirkland , Washington ) was an American writer and poet , who is known for his mastery of palindromes and pun .

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Bergerson's first volume of poetry, The Spirit of Adolescence , was published in 1950 and earned him a 1957 nomination as a Poet Laureate for Oregon . For political reasons, however, he declined the nomination.

As early as 1961, Bergerson's main interests were in pun and limited writing. He became fascinated by palindromes and began to compose a detailed, understandable, palindromic poem. The result Edna Waterfall had 1,034 letters and was in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest English palindrome.

In 1969 Bergerson took over the editing of Word Ways , which he resigned after a year. Nonetheless, he remained a regular contributor to the magazine for several decades, with memorable articles on palindromes, anagrams , pangrammatic windows, panalphabetic windows, self-referential acrostic poems, and so-called "vocabularyclept" poems. He also published games and puzzles in Reader's Digest and other magazines.

His 1973 book Palindromes and Anagrams was hailed by critics as the " sine qua non for all serious logologists" and the largest book on palindromes. Bergerson has often been referred to as one of the greatest palindromists of all time.

Life

Bergerson was born in Minneapolis. His mother was Margaret Jeske and his foster father was Ludvick Bergerson. Bergerson spent his youth in the mill towns of the Pacific Northwest . After serving in the United States Army (during which he served in the Battle of Guadalcanal ), he moved to Sweet Home , Oregon , not far from the factory, where he worked as a clapboard maker for over 50 years . In 1967 he met and married Nellie Wilson (née McLaughlin) and adopted their three youngest children; the marriage lasted until Nellie's death in 1987. His subsequent marriage to Christine Stamm lasted three years.

In 2010, Bergerson moved from Sweet Home to Woodinville , Washington. He died in Kirkland the following year .

Catalog raisonné

• Howard W. Bergerson. The Spirit of Adolescence. Little Press, 1950.
• Palindromes and Anagrams. Dover Publications, 1973, ISBN 0-486-20664-5 .
• Posterity is you. 1977.
• The Cosmic Sieve Hypothesis. Greenwood Periodicals, 1986.
• Earth: The Crossroads of the Cosmos. 1990.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} A. Ross Eckler, Jr .: Howard Bergerson . In: Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics . tape 43 , no. 2 , May 2010, p. 82-88 ( butler, edu ).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Howard W. Bergerson. In: The Seattle Times. February 23, 2011, accessed October 3, 2014 .  
3. ↑ Dmitri Borgmann: Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought . Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967.
4. ^ Howard W. Bergerson: Edna Waterfall . In: Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics . tape 2 , no. 3 , August 1969, p. 135 ( butler.edu ).
5. ^ Neil S. Friedman: This Week's Attitude. In: Canarsie Courier. February 21, 2002, accessed October 3, 2014 .  
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Howard W. Bergerson. In: The New Era. March 2, 2011, accessed October 18, 2014 .  
7. ^ Howard Richler: A Bawdy Language: How a Second-rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top . Stoddart, 1999, p. 188 .
8. ↑ Jezebel Q. XIXX, Dmitri Borgmann: Palindromes and Anagrams . In: Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics . tape 6 , no. 4 , November 1973, pp. 195-197 ( butler, edu ).
9. ^ The Greatest Palindrome Book Ever . In: The Palindromist . No.  3 , p. 32 .
10. ↑ Kelly House: Portland's Mark Saltveit to battle for title of world's best palindromist. In: The Oregonian . March 14, 2012, accessed October 6, 2014 .  
11. ↑ Michael Donner: I Love Me Vol. I . S. Wordrow's Palindrome Encyclopedia. Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill 1996, ISBN 1-56512-109-0 , pp. 59 .