Spring, with thanks to

Day 30: write a cento. This is a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems. A good way to jump-start the process is to find an online collection of poems about a particular topic (or in a particular style), and then mine the poems for good lines to string together.

Argh! Just what i don't need on a busy Saturday! Intriguing idea, but necessity kept it short.  I've given the source poems afterwards,  in case you have time and inclination to read the originals - fantastic poems,  all of them.  


Nothing is as beautiful as spring                          
Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees        
The budding twigs spread out their fan             
The edge of the blackthorn clumps in gold.    
I watched a blackbird on a budding sycamore - 
Now rings the woodland loud and long           
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.                        
And April I love for what                                    
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything         
when the world is puddle-wonderful       

© Copyright 2022. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved



Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring
Christina Rosetti, Spring
Wordsworth, Lines Written in Early Spring
John Clare, Young Lambs
Thomas Hardy,  I Watched a Blackbird
Tennyson, Canto CXV In Memoriam
Percy Shelley, To a Skylark
Edward Thomas, The Thrush
Shakespeare,  Sonnet 98
e e cumings in just-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leave taking

I've been to two funerals recently. I suppose it's inevitable that their frequency will increase as I get older,  and my peer group ages alongside me.  It makes you consider your own mortality, and prompts a resolve to use the days left to you more wisely.  But somehow you never do, preferring to think there's still enough time left.   The death of an elderly uncle is easier to bear. It's possible to reflect on a long life, well lived,  To remember the fun you had when you were small, How he made you shriek until you were breathless,  To consider the grace of his faith, which eased his end.  The death of my sunny, fun-filled friend Is much harder to balance. We are all too aware She had too few years to enjoy her joyful take on life,  Will miss out on too many evenings full of laughter,  No longer guide her grandchildren into adulthood. Both deaths celebrated as a release from pain.  Both lives celebrated as lives lived well.  We carry their memories home with us,   To
Read more

Kindness

Day 25: '  write a poem based on the “ Proust Questionnaire ,” a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlor games, and  adapted by modern interviewers . You could choose to answer the whole questionnaire, and then write a poem based on your answers, answer just a few, or just write a poem that’s based on the questions. You could even write a poem in the form of an entirely new Proust Questionnaire.' Typically I read the prompt in a rush before going swimming, seized on the word 'virtue' and composed something while in the pool.  It was only when I got back home that I realised the question was about the most overrated virtue.  Too late, I've written instead about the most underrated virtue: kindness.  It's hidden in the little things That brighten up each day. It's in the chores done without prompting,  The coins you save for my after-swim hairdryer,  The morning coffee brewed with a smile , The blanket shared on chilly evenings. It's in the well
Read more

Dont go to India

I wrote this after a toilet stop in the way from Jaipur to Varaneeshya.  Don't go to India  not if you worry about squatting over a hole in the ground, with no running water. not if you worry about hawkers thrusting their wares in your face, "300, 200, 100 only". not if you worry about children caked in street filth, tugging at your sleeve, your heart. not if you worry about rubbish, plastic bottles, bags, packaging, strewn across the streets. But if you can make peace with all that  you will find beauty wherever you look. ©  Copyright 2023. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved
Read more