Assignment--A cento taken from the lit mag you picked up from me Wednesday. 8-12 lines. Make no mistake, this assignment is a fantastic assignment to do, period, but also can be used to familiarize yourself with something you want to know more about (there's a poet doing centos taken *only* from Sigmund Freud's texts, another from old history textbooks, etc). I asked you to do one based on contemporary poetry to get you wondering what people are publishing now(-ish)ly and to start thinking about sending your own work out into the soup. I'm tricky that way.
Example of a modern cento here:
Wolf Cento
Very quick. Very intense, like a wolf
at a live heart, the sun breaks down.
What is important is to avoid
the time allotted for disavowels
as the livid wound
leaves a trace leaves an abscess
takes its contraction for those clouds
that dip thunder & vanish
like rose leaves in closed jars.
Age approaches, slowly. But it cannot
crystal bone into thin air.
The small hours open their wounds for me.
This is a woman’s confession:
I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me.
at a live heart, the sun breaks down.
What is important is to avoid
the time allotted for disavowels
as the livid wound
leaves a trace leaves an abscess
takes its contraction for those clouds
that dip thunder & vanish
like rose leaves in closed jars.
Age approaches, slowly. But it cannot
crystal bone into thin air.
The small hours open their wounds for me.
This is a woman’s confession:
I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me.
Sources: [Anne Sexton, Dylan Thomas, Larry Levis, Ingeborg Bachmann, Octavio Paz, Henri Michaux, Agnes Nemes Nagy, Joyce Mansour, William Burroughs, Meret Oppenheim, Mary Low, Adrienne Rich, Carl Sandburg]
No comments:
Post a Comment