Cento on Hope

For today’s poetry practice I thought I would be a bit lazy. Except it turns out that what I picked is not as easy as I thought it would be. I was researching new poetry forms to give a whirl and the cento appealed. Poets. org set out the guidelines for a cento here. They call it a patchwork poem, which does have alliteration. But I kind of feel it is a Mash Up. My own attempt does not use complete lines from a poet in every line. Some only use a fragment, or, in one instance, literally mash up two in a single line.

In view of my gratitude brief for November in terms of subject I feel today’s poetry practice celebrates my thanks to the lineage of poets stretching back into antiquity. The subject, Hope, may reflect what some are feeling today.

 

Hope Mash up

 

I stood out in the open cold.

The dark, too, blooms and sings.

We all approach the edge of the same blackness.

 

When the world falls in around you,

the sun rises in spite of everything.

A joy, a depression, a meanness…

 

When the worst thing happens

Time flies, hope flags, life plies a wearied way.

You see behind every face the mental emptiness.

 

Hope is the hardest love to carry.

The thing with feathers doesn’t need anything

from my old bitterness.

 

And just for those who are interested in knowing which poets got picked for the patchwork poem, this is the line by line reference.xds  p

 

Richard Eberhart

Wendell Berry

Elaine Feinstein

 

Naomi Shihab Nye

Derek Mahon

Rumi

 

U.A. Fanthorpe

Christina Rosetti

T.S. Eliot

 

Jane Hirshfield

Emily Dickinson/Naomi Shihab Nye

Antoniio Machado