"It Left": Poetic response to Get Your Poem On #119 from @readwritepoem

It took me a while, but yesterday I finally settled in and wrote a cento to fit the prompt from ReadWritePoem.org.

I chose the cento form – a poem created from other poems. I chose a poem written by Sir Phillip Stanley, an English renaissance poet, whose work I happened upon while making some art trading cards. I got this particular poetry collection at a used book sale and while these poems are not ones I would sit and devour all at once like I devour Mary Oliver or Denise Levertov, their beautiful yet succinct, savory language works remarkably well in collage and visual art.

 

My eyes happened upon Stanley’s poem with the lines, “God, help us” and “female frenzy” and “love is dead” – I knew I was onto something.

 

Alas, this morning when I came to blog it and add it to the list at RWP, it had disappeared… which reminded me of the very theme for the poems we were to write this week – poems reflecting “Let’s Get it On”. One of the markers of the end of relationships is when “getting it on” literally gets up and leaves.

 

This short poem, written in mourning of the other poem and “getting it on” is the response to this week’s wistful meanderings through words and intimacy’s graveyard.

IT LEFT

It left --

Escaped from

Its place on

The kitchen

Table

 

My poem

The cento

Sir Philip

Stanley wrote

With me

 

Yesterday

I smiled

Shyly into

Its surprising

Combinations

 

And this

Morning

Just like that

Untended it

Vanishes

 

Stays unfound

So I am left

With the poignant

Recollection

Of what was

Comments

[Cynthia Short]

As the saying goes about making lemonade from lemons, you did that from your unfortunate "missing" poem.
It made me feel the hollowness of loss and a certain inevitability. Very good!

[Anthony North]

A tangible feeling of loss in this. Poignant. Excellent.

[Derrick]

Hi Julie,

Such fleeting pleasure! But better to have loved and lost .....

[Matt Quinn]

I like the poem. I can relate to poems vanishing.

[rob kistner]

I enjoyed this -- and hope perhaps the prodigal piece will come home...
...rob
Image & Verse

[pamela]

Julie,
Excellent poem! Poignant!
Pamela

[Karen]

I'm eager to read your next post, for I saw before I got here that it once was lost but now is found. I really like this one, though. I lost a haiku once - it blew right out the car window on the way to work. I ended up writing a long poem that took me from home to work, searching for my lost haiku. I think someone said, make lemonade! ;-)

[Therese Broderick]

I love how this poem combines the cento on a piece of paper (there, then gone) with the legendary Sir Philip Stanley (once on earth alive, then gone). For me, the poem suggests that Sir Philip Stanley somehow came and took the poem away for himself -- that he who was once gone RETURNED and then left again (or maybe is still around? maybe returned the poem to you?). I really liked that extra layer in this poem!

[Uma Gowrishankar]

I love this poem, the listless waiting for the lost one...

[Nicole Nicholson]

I like how you address your missing poem with the "missing" of and longing for it in this piece. I really would have loved to seen your original. The cento form continues to fascinate me.

-Nicole