Fred Yannantuono has many talents. He is the owner of County Chair Party Rentals, a company that his father began in 1934. On Sundays in the summertime, he drives a truck taking punch bowls, chairs, tables, plates, silverware, and tablecloths to customers in the tristate area. In his free time, he is the organizer of a film festival at the local library in Bronxville that features classic films once a month during the school year. He also plays pool and once sank 20 straight balls at Cafe Billiards on Tuckahoe Road in Yonkers. He even won a yodeling contest in a German restaurant at Walt Disney’s Epcot Center: “I was just a little bit less bad than the other guys.”

But it was Mr.Yannantuono’s literary talents that were on display at the Cornelia Street Cafe on Monday.The audience was a little surprised when, after reading poems, he opened a cardboard box onstage and produced several paper scrolls. Fellow poet Ted Jonathan, who organizes this monthly event for the literary magazine New York Quarterly, helped unroll them for the audience to read. They were palindromes, or words or phrases that read the same forward and backward.

Among the better-known palindromes the reader may know are “Madam, I’m Adam,” and “Able was I ere I saw Elba.” Mr. Yannantuono’s favorite palindrome is attributed to James Thurber: “He goddam mad dog, eh?”

Mr. Yannantuono, who studied literature and psychology at Georgetown University, said he made anagrams (a word game where letters are scrambled to make new words) before becoming interested in palindromes. Last March he read palindromes at the cafe but found that the audience had to take his word that they were palindromes. This time he came armed with visual aids. It’s easier when the audience can “see these things,” he said.

He read “Magritte’s Palindrome,” which will appear in an upcoming issue of New York Quarterly. The palindrome is:

Il a Dada, mon ami, no? T.S. Eliot is a tomato. My my! Mot a mot! As I toilest on I’m a nomad, a Dali.

Mr. Yannantuono has published 11 palindromes in magazines such as Light Quarterly, Reflections, Fugue, and Rio Grande Review. His first palindrome appeared in Ledge magazine in Queens. It was a short palindrome for his father, who died before he started writing poetry five years ago: “A poem, dad. Me! O Pa!”

Mr.Yannantuono said the word “the” is almost impossible to use in a palindrome, because it is so difficult to find combinations for “eht.” “And” is also difficult, though Mr. Eckler pointed out that there is the word “kidnap.”

Mr. Yannantuono writes palindromes by trial and error, toggling back and forth at the ends of the palindrome or writing from the center outward.

He hopes to publish both a book of palindromes and a book of poems.

Writer Jon Agee has written a series of books of palindromes accompanied by cartoons. One features a butler approaching a man with the caption: “Risotto, sir.”

Ross Eckler, who is editor of “Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics (www.wordways.com), said the longest palindrome in Webster’s Third Unabridged Dictionary was “kinnikinnik,” a kind of tobacco that Indians used to smoke. Next is “Malayalam,” a Dravidian language from India. Mr. Eckler said he prefers the shorter palindromes that make good linguistic sense, such as the famous “A man, a plan, a canal – panama.” Other palindromes he likes are “Never odd or even” and the charming question “Do geese see god?” He gave an example of a political palindrome that tells an untruth: “No x in Nixon.” But Mr. Eckler said long palindromes become strained or artificial, even though individual sections can make “good local sense.”

French experimental writer Georges Perec wrote a famous, gargantuan palindrome. Like other members of the literary group Oulipo, Perec was interested in writing under constraints such as restricted letter choice.

Noted lexicographer Laurence Urdang, who founded but no longer edits Verbatim, the Language Quarterly (verbatimmag.com), said palindromes are “sort of enjoyable”but “gimmicky.” He mentioned a book of palindromes published years ago called “Rats Live on No Evil Star.” He said there’s one advantage when the name of a book is a palindrome: “You only have to remember half of the title.”

Mr. Eckler said a magazine devoted to palindromes is published in Barcelona in the Catalan language. There also have been attempts to have computers generate palindromes.

But Mr.Yannantuono doesn’t need to rely on computers. He has written some infinite palindromes; one is called the “How Rumors Spread Palindrome.” It begins: “Idiot to idiot to idiot to idiot to idiot to idi …” Another endless palindrome he wrote is called the “Cicada Plague Palindrome.” It begins: “Cicada had a cicada had a cicada had a cicada had a cic …”

gshapiro@nysun.com