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 words
2
under the edge of february
3
under the holsteins’ steaming noses
4
days below days like a river running under the stars
5
remember the sky that you were born under
6
under eclipse and the day blotted out
7
under a curfew of glass
8
crying under the alder
9
II.
without trousers and without underpants
10
a stranger is peeing ecstatic under the moon
11
under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs
12
under awnings, under stars
13
have sex under the giant philodendron
14
and in the ooze under
15
no gods remember it, no understanding
16
III.
I want to be whole again, so I begin living truthfully under
17
every night, under the millions of stars
18
heart expanding under the ice
19
- words under pressure bleed original sense by George Quasha
- The Words Under the Words by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Under the Edge of February by Jayne Cortez
- A Family History by Julia Spicher Kasdorf
- The Forgotten Madmen of Ménilmontant by Frank Stanford
- Remember by Joy Harjo
- The Tower by W. B. Yeats
- I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror by Agha Shahid Ali
- What the Horses See at Night by Robin Robertson
- Lives of the Dead: An Epic: Chapter One by Hanoch Levin, translated by Ata Hadari
- Under a Full Moon at Midnight by Merrill Leffler
- Chicago by Carl Sandburg
- The Shooting of John Dillinger Outside the Biograph Theater, July 22, 1934 by David Wagoner
- Dispatches from Devereux Slough by Mark Jarman
- Canto XIV by Ezra Pound
- Twilights, V by Conrad Aiken
- Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances by Elizabeth A.I. Powell
- Ruins Under the Stars by Galway Kinnell
- 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 overpass
1
under chenille bedspreads
2
watching the garden winter under the moon
3
under the hooves of a horse
4
trampled underfoot
5
tossed, knotted and torn under
6
by the sea under the yellow and sagging moon
7
a beaked ship under sail
8
under the arching heavens
9
circling a railway underpass
10
where badgers undermine the tarred road
11
on the underside of the world
12
under the gas lamps luring the farm boys
13
to have sex under the giant philodendron
14
in worn underpants and plastic sandals
15
playing in the dirt under a porch
16
crawling under the stairs
17
under the brown fog of a winter noon
18
under the triumphal arch
19
the hard sidewalk under my shoes
20
a heap of ruins trodden underfoot
21
in your “office” under the lean-to
22
under the racket of this day’s distractions
23
reading the Greeks under a blanket of blue
24
screaming under the stairways
25
under Grand Central’s tattered vault
26
under a curfew of glass
27
wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs
28
under the bedroom floor
29
- At the Grave of My Guardian Angel: St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans by Larry Levis
- Falling by James Dickey
- Phases by Michael Redhill
- The Forgotten Madmen of Ménilmontant by Frank Stanford
- Your Shakespeare by Marvin Bell
- Enter the Void by Juan Felipe Herrera
- Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking by Walt Whitman
- The Swan by John Gould Fletcher
- When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman
- How to Draw a Perfect Circle by Terrance Hayes
- Over the Dead Flatness of the Fens by William Logan
- [I pinch myself hard on the inner arm] by Susan Hampton
- Chicago by Carl Sandburg
- Dispatches from Devereux Slough by Mark Jarman
- Painted Eyes by Henri Cole
- The Great Migration by Minnie Bruce Pratt
- The Shark’s Parlor by James Dickey
- The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
- The Cafe Underground by John Malcolm Brinnin
- CXIV by Sonnet L’Abeé
- 1851: A Message to Denmark Hill by Richard Howard
- Vertumnal by Stephen Yenser
- Morning Voices by Ed Falco
- Reading the Greeks Under a Blanket of Blue by William Coleman
- Howl, Parts I & II by Allen Ginsberg
- Broadway by Mark Doty
- I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror by Agha Shahid Ali
- Song of Myself (1892 version) by Walt Whitman
- 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.
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!
