Cento's

So I'm taking an Intro to Creative writing class, and last week we learned about Cento's. A Cento is a piece of wriing, especially a poem, composed wholly of quotations from the works of other authors. At least that's the definition from Dictionary.com. But really that's basically what it is. So my professor hands us all random books of poetry from different authors, and we're told to read some of their poems and pick random lines from different poems that we like or find interesting; one line per poem. Then we were to put those lines together to make a poem. They turned out really cool actually! I thought it would be a bit messy but everyone's turned out great.

The poet I had was C.K. WIlliams. When I randomly read one of his poems I didn't really like it. I thought to myself, "He's one of those abstract people who write about anything and everything in one poem, and they never conclude to anything!" I didn't understand what the heck he was talking about! But I kept reading, really just to find lines, but I realized that as I read I started to understand more and more what he was talking about. I found that by the end of our class I really liked C.K. Williams' poems. They were so creative and thoughtful, full of great insight and I just loved them! Anyway, I pulled together some of the lines I picked out and came up with a pretty awesome poem if I do say so myself. Technically I didn't write it... but I put the lines together. So I just wanted to share what I came up with.

I Highly suggest looking into C.K. Williams' poetry it really is excellent.



C.K. Williams Cento
I keep coming to lean on the sill
dreaming that someday we won't touch anything
but we are suffering several directions at once
it's not them, it's us: we know too much.
I miss you now, can you kiss me goodbye?
You just take breaths
tangled so closely to me that we are vines
we are the end, we are the living end.
It is awful not to be anywhere at all,
but I am still here; I have survived
one tiny bit of pain is left.
There is nothing.




From C.K. Williams Collected Works.