A memory sneaks off.
And now: it is easy to forget
the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff,
and verbena in submarine gardens,
the remains of everything consumed
at the altar of surrender.
I wasn't at all surprised
she would ask
those hunters who slew bird and lynx
how we twisted into ourselves to live:
The heart astonished to find belonging
weighs nothing.
As we lean over the deep well, we whisper
under the malicious glints of the clouds,
sometimes to outwit love.
Because we cannot know, we imagine
how there can be a place
to speak against the daily sinking flame.
_______________________________________
My poem above is an example of a cento, or collage poem. It is made up of lines from other poets' poems. In order, the lines are borrowed from the following poems, almost all of which are online:
1 "La Flor de Tia Peting", Sofia M. Starnes
2 "Diving Into the Wreck", Adrienne Rich
3 "Proem", Octavio Paz
4 "House Fire", Elizabeth Austen
5 "Homecoming", Robert Lowell
6 "In the Waiting Room", Elizabeth Bishop
7 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", Anne Sexton
8 [prologue] in You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake, Anna Moschovakis
9 "An Octave Above Thunder", Carol Muske-Dukes
10 "Black Petal", Li-Young Lee
11 "Black Petal", Li-Young Lee
12 "Springing", Marie Ponsot
13 "Flood", Miyazawa Kenji
14 "Meditation on Falling", Catherine Barnett
15 "History of Hurricanes", Teresa Cader
16 "Snow", Naomi Shihab Nye
17 "Imagining Starry", Marie Ponsot
The cento is the theme this month at TweetSpeakPoetry and Every Day Poems.
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5 comments:
Nicely accomplished. It's reminiscent in style to today's poem of the day from the Poetry Foundation - not, as far as I know, a cento, but of a kind: Karen Volkman's "[I never wish to sing again as I used to . . .]"
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/karen-volkman
this made me think of those that feel like they will never fit...never be good enough and certainly never accepted...kinda like going to church that first time...or first in a long time...
Such a clever poem - I cannot believe you have made such a seamless mosaic. k.
oh wow -- this is spectacular!
For me, this paragraph grabbed me...
And now: it is easy to forget
the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff,
and verbena in submarine gardens,
the remains of everything consumed
at the altar of surrender.
Your abilities leave me a bit speechless at times.
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