Writing Centos With My Poetry Sisters

The challenge this month, set by Sara, was to write a cento. Here are the directions we received.

I pick a line of poetry from a poet outside our culture (whatever that means!).  Then to diversify, we each build our centos by choosing a different word from that line. That way, we will have varied poems, but each poem will be unified by its own unique word. 

Say I choose this from the poet Agha Shahid Ali:
     I see Argentina and Paraguay
     under a curfew of glass, their colors
     breaking, like oil. The night in Uruguay 

Then each of us could pick a word from it:  "Argentina" or "Paraguay" (hard!) or "curfew" or "glass" or "colors" or "breaking" or even "see" or "under"  and collage a poem from there. Every subsequent line has to be taken from a different poem and has to have your chosen word somewhere in it, long or short.  Feel free to use as many poems and cultures as you like.  

This has been my favorite challenge so far this year. I collected more than 12 pages of poetry lines containing the word under. I cut the lines apart and moved them around, a lot like magnetic poetry. Here's the first poem I wrote. You can find the source of the lines (and title) below the poem.

words under pressure bleed original sense¹

I. 
answer, if you hear the words under the words²
under the edge of february³
under the holsteins’ steaming noses⁴
days below days like a river running under the stars⁵

remember the sky that you were born under⁶
under eclipse and the day blotted out⁷
under a curfew of glass⁸
crying under the alder⁹

II.
without trousers and without underpants¹⁰
a stranger is peeing ecstatic under the moon¹¹
under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs¹²

under awnings, under stars¹³
have sex under the giant philodendron¹⁴
and in the ooze under¹⁵
no gods remember it, no understanding¹⁶

III. 
I want to be whole again, so I begin living truthfully under¹⁷
every night, under the millions of stars¹⁸
heart expanding under the ice¹⁹

1. words under pressure bleed original sense by George Quasha
2. The Words Under the Words by Naomi Shihab Nye
3. Under the Edge of February by Jayne Cortez
4. A Family History by Julia Spicher Kasdorf
5. The Forgotten Madmen of Ménilmontant by Frank Stanford
6. Remember by Joy Harjo
7. The Tower by W. B. Yeats
8. I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror by Agha Shahid Ali
9. What the Horses See at Night by Robin Robertson
10. Lives of the Dead: An Epic: Chapter One by Hanoch Levin, translated by Ata Hadari
11. Under a Full Moon at Midnight by Merrill Leffler
12. Chicago by Carl Sandburg
13. The Shooting of John Dillinger Outside the Biograph Theater, July 22, 1934 by David Wagoner
14. Dispatches from Devereux Slough by Mark Jarman
15. Canto XIV by Ezra Pound
16. Twilights, V by Conrad Aiken
17. Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances by Elizabeth A.I. Powell
18. Ruins Under the Stars by Galway Kinnell
19. Phases by Michael Redhill

I had so much fun writing the first poem that I decided to try a second. I like this one even better than the first. And yes, my dreams are this weird.

Where Dreams Take Me After Reading at Bedtime

our little apartment under the freeway overpass¹
under chenille bedspreads²
watching the garden winter under the moon³

under the hooves of a horse⁴
trampled underfoot⁵
tossed, knotted and torn under⁶

by the sea under the yellow and sagging moon⁷
a beaked ship under sail⁸
under the arching heavens⁹

circling a railway underpass¹⁰
where badgers undermine the tarred road¹¹
on the underside of the world¹²

under the gas lamps luring the farm boys¹³
to have sex under the giant philodendron¹⁴
in worn underpants and plastic sandals¹⁵

playing in the dirt under a porch¹⁶
crawling under the stairs¹⁷
under the brown fog of a winter noon¹⁸

under the triumphal arch¹⁹
the hard sidewalk under my shoes²⁰
a heap of ruins trodden underfoot²¹

in your “office” under the lean-to²²
under the racket of this day’s distractions²³
reading the Greeks under a blanket of blue²⁴

screaming under the stairways²⁵
under Grand Central’s tattered vault²⁶
under a curfew of glass²⁷

wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs²⁸
under the bedroom floor²⁹

1. At the Grave of My Guardian Angel: St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans by Larry Levis
2. Falling by James Dickey
3. Phases by Michael Redhill
4. The Forgotten Madmen of Ménilmontant by Frank Stanford
5. Your Shakespeare by Marvin Bell
6. Enter the Void by Juan Felipe Herrera
7. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking by Walt Whitman
8. The Swan by John Gould Fletcher
9. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman
10. How to Draw a Perfect Circle by Terrance Hayes
11. Over the Dead Flatness of the Fens by William Logan
12.  [I pinch myself hard on the inner arm] by Susan Hampton
13. Chicago by Carl Sandburg
14. Dispatches from Devereux Slough by Mark Jarman
15. Painted Eyes by Henri Cole
16. The Great Migration by Minnie Bruce Pratt
17. The Shark’s Parlor by James Dickey
18. The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
19. The Cafe Underground by John Malcolm Brinnin
20. CXIV by Sonnet L’Abeé 
21. 1851: A Message to Denmark Hill by Richard Howard
22. Vertumnal by Stephen Yenser
23. Morning Voices by Ed Falco
24. Reading the Greeks Under a Blanket of Blue by William Coleman
25. Howl, Parts I & II by Allen Ginsberg
26. Broadway by Mark Doty
27. I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror by Agha Shahid Ali 
28. Song of Myself (1892 version) by Walt Whitman
29. The Shark’s Parlor by James Dickey

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2018. All rights reserved.

You can read the pieces written by my poetry sisters at the links below. Life has called some sisters away this month, but they'll be back.

• Tanita Davis
• Liz Garton Scanlon
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link. Happy poetry Friday friends!