It’s a remarkable sensation being in a group of writers where each knows the other’s go-to ideas and style and how that projection produces a poem from cento process like a thumb print from each. The effect among people who are strangers isn’t visible in the same striking way.
To today’s rusty gate
I gave the disorder of my studio
our mixed messages
poking flashlight light
ever-deepening shades of avocado
bit of lava from cold volcano
because this seems to be how i keep going
clouds flitter relief
the ceiling opens
present but isn’t
The parts in new combinations adds up to different direction and effect. In order of lines above (including title): The Irrationalist by Suzanne Buffam, p. 29 (Anansi, 2010) The Cabbage of Paradise by Colin Morton, p. 48 (Seraphim, 2007), Elizabeth Fanto in Take-out Window, p. 55 (Haiku Society of America, 2014), George Bowering in Love Where the Nights are Long p. 50 (M&S, 1966), Paul Muldoon Poem: 1968-1998, p126 (Farrar, Straus & Gireaux, 2001), Blue Light in the Dark by Brenda Brooks, p.44 (Polstar, 1994), Casemate Poems (Collected) by Joe Blades, p62 (Chaudiere Books, 2011), Ecstatic Torture Gratitude by Jill Battson, p. 27 (Guernica, 2011), Margaret Atwood: Selected Poems, p145, (Oxford, 1976), and In the Laurels, Caught by Lee Ann Brown p 74 (Fence, 2013).