The Apostrophe Blog
Two centos from my draft manuscript, I Am Speechless—“Cusp” and “where late the sweet birds sang”—have been accepted for published in the When It Rains It Pours anthology from Kind of a Hurricane Press. The latter is below and it’s followed by the list of poets whose lines I borrowed to construct this “found” poem.
where late the sweet birds sang
considering The Sixth Extinction
white day, black river
a taper in a rushing wind
as seed follows flower to earth
the light passes
in a silent boat
carrying her full cargo of roses
where the waves break
at the point of shining feathers
then leave old regret
never reaching
the lucky ones with their shadows
when the flowers turn to husks
under a deserted sky
dark, and rain in the air
at this end of the milky way
only consonants and vowels
This poem is a cento of first and last lines taken from poems featured in The Voice That Is Great within Us edited by Hayden Carruth. These sixteen lines are by the following poets: William Carlos Williams; Sara Teasdale; Conrad Aiken; H.D.; Lorine Niedecker; Theodore Roethke; Archibald MacLeish; Diane Wakoski; J.V. Cunningham; Mina Loy; W.S. Merwin; Galway Kinnell; John Berryman; Charles Olson; Gary Snyder; and John Crowe Ransom.
The poem takes it title from a line in William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold.”
My photo above is of the Garden of Surging Waves in downtown Astoria, Oregon.
Interests: Reading, writing, not arithmetic. The art and craft of poetry. Photography. Vegetable and flower gardening especially heirloom bulbs and dahlias. Movies in real theatres. Theatre on real stages. Art in real galleries. Crossword puzzles and, of course, Wordle. Singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Patti Griffin. All kinds of music especially 1930s jazz. Venice, Italy! The Dude abides.
- RIP to Alice Munro, the GOAT of the Short Story - May 14, 2024
- Publication News: Scintilla - May 13, 2024
- Writing in Form: The Prose Poem - May 7, 2024
