The places cats won't go. The climbing out onto the banks. The naked man
in the glaring white gap
Hot black dunes in the air—we slept
the chill of closed eyelids,
not April and the magnolias
The trick is to make it personal:
let silence drill its hole,
sleepily indifferent
– Johannes Beilharz
Collated for NaPoWriMo day 22. The task was to participate in the cento contest organized by Danielle Pafunda (who has been posting her NaPoems over at the Bloof Books website). What’s a cento? It’s a poem composed entirely of lines from other poems.
The above poem is composed entirely of lines tweeted today by Danielle through the twitter feed of the Academy of American Poets.
The authors of the lines I chose are, in the sequence of the appearance of the lines: Anne Carson Nox, Catie Rosemurgy, Medbh McGuckian, Henri Cole, Marina Tsvetaeva, James Schuyler, Khaled Mattawa, Daniel Johnson, William Carlos Williams
4 comments:
The cento is not a form that appeals to me, but at least your cento is a proper poem. I did one once, but was forced to add my own words to make any sense of it!
Dream-like quality to it - strong images...
I think it strange to make a pastiche of other's words. Why not write your own?
Some centos leave me cold, but yours is stitched together nicely.
Pamela
Post a Comment