Last month, for the first time ever, I skipped the prompt from my Poetry Sisters.
It was a sestina, for goodness sakes — but that’s no excuse.
Honestly, I might not have gotten to it even if it had been a haiku.
It was just that kind of month.
But I’m STILL sad about it, and you can rest assured it’s not gonna happen again.
So, without further therapeutic babbling I give you this month’s poem!
Form: A Cento
Assigned by: Sara Lewis Holmes
Source line: I see Argentina and Paraguay under a curfew of glass, their colors breaking, like oil.
From: I see Chile in my Rearview Mirror by Agha Shahid Ali
From the given source line, I chose the word “breaking.” I then built a poem using lines from other people’s poetry. Each line contained the word breaking (or break) (or broke) and I’ve cited all of those at the end of the piece.
Oh, and one last thing: Centos are a fun and obsessive puzzle. Try one!!
Broken Elsewhere
A Cento Compiled by Liz Garton Scanlon
He says we are prisms breaking light into color –
breaking the silence of the seas
breaking the rocks they break on
breaking with convention
He tells me lines should
break
like rapture breaking on the mind
breaking with love and pain
breaking the golden lilies afloat
But breaking here means broken elsewhere
breaking & entering wearing glee & sadness
under a curfew of glass, their colors breaking, like
the wolf again, my own teeth breaking
patterns and routes breaking
Hearing the waves breaking one, two, one, two
breaking in despair
It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke
as if a child breaking into a run. That is what I see.
Traci Brimhall – Our Bodies Break Light
William Wordswoth – The Solitary Reaper
Galway Killen – Old Arrivals
Michael Leong – Transmitting the Vertical Immensity of Coniferous Light
Jose B. Gonzalez – Lines Breaking
Stanley Kunitz
Jessie Redmon Fauset – La Vie C’est La Vie
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – A Musical Instrument
Dora Malech – Breaking News
Terrence Hayes – American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin
Agha Shahid Ali — I See Chile in My Review Mirror TITLE
Tina Chang – The Future is an Animal
A.R. Ammons – Easter Morning
Alexandra Harris – Virginia Woolf
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper – The Slave Mother
Abraham Crowley – The Heart Breakin
Khaled Mattawa – Before
To see more, go have a look at these posts:
Laura
Sara
Tanita
Tricia
And Poetry Friday, where there’s so much more, is at Beyond LiteracyLink!
Liz, this is such a haunting poem. Something about the juxtaposition of these two lines
under a curfew of glass, their colors breaking, like
the wolf again, my own teeth breaking
really gets to me. And the whole poem is filled, for me, with heartbreak and despair over the world’s brokenness. But the poem is beautiful itself, which is so odd, but a great reminder that sometimes art and witnessing are the only beauty we find. The only way to heal.
This eponymous “he” – I have questions. Is He lying? Attempting to define the world/ how things should be within it? The speaker’s truth comes through so clearly – she knows: breaking here means broken elsewhere. This is the truth we all live with as interdependent beings. We can decide that “breaks” (in the transitive form) we take — don’t matter, that they (in the intransitive) aren’t shattering or destroying anything like hearts or cultures or countries or the world.
Maybe we’re wrong. And that IS haunting, and the meaning is ephemeral and just slips through the fingers the harder you try to grasp it. I think you just won centos, Liz. ♥
I know I said this before, but my favorite part of this is how you execute a sonnet-like “turn” with that amazing line about “broken elsewhere.” But I also delight in your use of repetition and yes, line breaks! So beautifully made, Liz.
Liz, I enjoyed reading your cento and am fascinated by the process that Laura introduced in her post. I am glad that I followed her post with yours to see how the intricacies of this jigsaw puzzle format works. Your line, “But breaking here means broken elsewhere,” is such a powerful one from the narrator’s perspective-an introspective look at life. Thanks for sharing this format. Someday, I might be brave enough to do the research that the execution of a cento requires.
And so it broke …
There is so much goodness in the brokenness here (if that’s a thing) …
You took a tough word and worked magic.
I’ve had fun learning about this form from all of you, and I’m looking forward to giving it a go. Your poem is lovely.
I am enjoying reading all the different centos and marveling at how you use lines from others to create something new. It does seem intriguing to try.
Well, I left a comment yesterday, but it seems to have been lost in the ether. Do i even remember what I write? Of course not!
There is something about the brokenness of the poem that just tugs at the reader. The line that got me first was “it gave a piteous groan, and so it broke.”
This is a beautiful poem.