Tag: cento

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Celebrating Living Poets: Amanda Gorman

I was transfixed on the smiling poet delivering her poem with grace and poise at the Biden inauguration. Wearing a yellow coat, with red, she beamed and took the podium. When she spoke, I was speechless, mesmerized. Her name is Amanda Gorman, and her poetry is healing. Our nation needs a spoonful – perhaps a bottle full – of Amanda Gorman right now. You can read more about Amanda Gorman here and here. I’ve composed a Cento poem using Gorman’s lines from various poems, listed beneath the poem. Her words: Pay Attention. Learn from them. are words I will carry into the day.

We Rouse Ghosts

Even as we stand stone-still

we rouse ghosts ~

A grandma on a porch fingers her rosaries.

This truth, like the white-blown sky.

What endures isn’t always what escapes.

Pay attention.

Learn from them.

Taken from: The Shallows; Who We Gonna Call; The Miracle of Morning; & So; Cordage, or Atonement; Hephaestus; In the Deep

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Celebrating Living Poets: Joy Harjo

The living poet I’m celebrating today is Joy Harjo, our National Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022. Harjo is a Native American poet who writes about nature, sky, and origins. I am using her existing lines from The Woman Who Fell from the Sky to create a Cento poem.

You can read more about Joy Harjo here.

Night Sky

From the moon we all look the same

When the earth makes a particularly hard turn

When embers from the sacred middle are climbing out the other side of stars

Wings of night sky

Or is it the shadow of a woman on the run?

Lines taken from the poems, in this order: Promise; The Song of the House in the House; The Place the Musician Became a Bear; The Dawn Appears with Butterflies; Witness

Sneak peek of poets coming days 21-31
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Celebrating Living Poets: Kate Baer

She’s a poet with a playlist for everything. She finds messages of wisdom in her hate mail replies and turns it into found poetry. She’s a mother, a wife, and a writer, and she’ll make you stop and think. The living poet I’m celebrating today is Kate Baer, who was first recommended to me by my friend and small group writing buddy Glenda Funk. I started with her collection I Hope This Finds You Well and then read all the others, and I’m anxiously awaiting whatever comes next. Hers are dessert poems with a bit of a sharp kick, like a tangy lemon tart or a bowl of the sweetest watermelon sprinkled with Tajin. It hits you square in the womanhood solidarity in its delicious aftertaste.

You can read more about Kate Baer here. Be sure to scroll down deep enough in the article to listen to her playlists – they’re all linked, and I leave her writing playlist on repeat whether I’m writing or working in my cubicle with my noise-cancelling headphones (perfect for when a colleague is making a phone call or having a conversation).

Advice on writing from Kate can be found here. Another interview here.

Snapshot

The moment before the photograph

you turn and lift your face

in the blue eye of winter

fat with love, drunk with adoration

eyes up, arms out

walk out into the evening and sing

no music. Just the world and all its noise. You.

I never wanted anything more than you.

Taken from: The Bridesmaid’s Song; After; Today; Grown Alice; Undivided Attention; The Protagonist Remembers; How it Will Happen; For My Son on His 13th Birthday.

Poets for Days 11-20
Another Sneak Peek of what has been and what’s to come…..
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Celebrating Living Poets: Hannah Rosenberg

The living poet I’m celebrating on this 19th day of The Slice of Life Challenge at Twowritingteachers.org is Hannah Rosenberg. She is the author of the collection entitled Same, containing poems from which I am using her existing lines to create an original Cento poem.

You can read more about Hannah Rosenberg on her website. Or, follow her on Instagram at @hannarowrites. You can also read this interview to learn more about Hannah.

Souls of Women

My life is filled with the souls of women.

They made pasta and Alfredo sauce, bought chips,

building a life we knew was fleeting.

It’s nice to know there are people out there, even if they are not.

Taken from: Marriage of Friends; Once Upon a Time in an Apartment in Boston; Roommates in my Twenties; Always at Home with Them.

A Sneak peek of living poets Days 11-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: Chelsea Rathburn

Last night’s Slicer Meet-Up was a great way to meet three slicers I’ve never met on camera before – Cheryl, Chris, and Lori – and “see” Lainie again! Even through I read their blogs and feel I know a few things about them, it’s such a deeper experience when you can hear voices and see eyes. Thank you, Lainie, for setting this up, and a heartfelt Cheers to friends I know a little better now!


This month, I’m celebrating living poets by writing a Cento poem from a chosen collection of their work. I’m proud to say that the poet today is from my own home state.

Look closely at the photos of the books by Chelsea Rathburn below, and you will notice that there are color tabs marking many of the pages. When this current Poet Laureate of Georgia came to visit our local coffee shop during National Poetry Month two years ago, I tabbed the pages that I requested she share during her reading. You can read more about Chelsea Rathburn here.

Ol’ Possum Playing Poker, Drinking Bourbon, and Smoking Cigars In His Old Age

I picture him still sitting in some cafe

women in rustling skirts, old men with walkers

And that big curved room with the water lilies.

Hateful? He had a mean streak, maybe

thin tail pointing toward us, face turned away.

Lines for this poem were taken from, in this order: The Talker; Eclogue with Paris and Prayer; Eclogue with a Line from a Postcard; Eclogue with Street Theatre; Small Deaths.

A sneak peek at poets for days 11-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: Lyndsay Rush

She calls herself Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin. Lyndsay Rush is the living poet I’m celebrating today during the 2026 Slice of Life Challenge. You can read all the posts each day at www.twowritingteachers.org as writers blog throughout March and post their links on the community site. If I had a colleague at the water cooler flattening her hand to admire her nail polish and declaring that she was so damn sure she would never read a poem she liked, this is the book I’d hand her before retreating around the corner and peering over the top of the cubicle at her in her chair devouring these poems and proving herself wrong.

Lyndsay Rush, author of A Bit Much, got her start as an Instagram poet. Click her name to read the interview that gives more information about Lyndsay. I’ve used her collection to create a Cento poem by writing several of her existing lines into a new arrangement.

The Dark Doorway

You heard it here first:

Otters hold hands while they sleep

If you’re feeling weird lately

stand in the dark doorway of

The Gospel I was raised on

for the nonbelievers

and drive off into the sunset

Lines in this Cento are taken from these poems, in this order: Maybe Crocs are Okay; Loving Each Otter; Help; Someone to Eat Chips With; His Body is Bread and So is Mine; Beware of Lost Boys; A Spell for Success

A sneak peek of poets days 11-20
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Celebrating Living Poets: David Elliott

I love books in verse – especially biographies, particularly this one: Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc, by David Elliott. One of my favorite things about this particular book is that it tells the format of each poem in the back of the book. Elliott writes in several signature forms, including shape poetry. Another great thing: this book is part of a series – so when its final page is turned, there will be another one waiting.

You can read more about David Elliott here and here.

I Am

The harp and that halo, all those things

from that bright morning to this ~

I am a fortress.

I am a helmet on a strange head.

Taken from: Saint Michael; Joan; Virginity; Her Hair.

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Celebrating Living Poets: Clint Smith

This is the tenth day of the 2026 Slice of Life Challenge, and we are 1/3 of the way through the month of March’s daily blogging challenge. I’m celebrating some of my favorite living poets this month by sharing a Cento poem I’ve created from one of their poetry collections. I was introduced to Clint Smith through a Book Love Summer Reading Club I participated in through Penny Kittle’s group several years ago when we all read Counting Descent. I hung on every.single.line and marveled in the raw truths of exposed feelings. With poetry this rich and moving, the way it made my soul quiver with such ability to see things more clearly, I could not understand why everyone wasn’t rushing to devour more poetry and make it a main course of their reading diets. I understood why all the holiest books of this world are all in verse. I love the way Clint Smith uses lower case letters in titles and lines, and how he takes a perspective of what was said by many voices to a black boy. He writes prose poetry beautifully, too. Here is a poet who will take a reader of other genres and make them a reader who craves more poetry.

You can read about Clint Smith here. He won the 2014 National Slam Championship, and if I were picking a poet to have lunch with, I’d want my table with Clint Smith.

Invisible

You are invisible until

long after the song has stopped

until there’s nothing left inside

those stained glass shadows

maybe the poem is a cry for help

Taken from: Ode to the only black kid in the class; When Maze and Franie Beverly Come on in my House; what the fire hydrant said to the black boy; what the cathedral said to the black boy; Queries of Unrest.

The first ten poets, in order from bottom to top
A sneak peek of the poets I’m reading the next ten days

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Celebrating Living Poet Miranda Cowley Heller

This month during the Slice of Life Challenge, I’m featuring some of my favorite poetry books by living poets and writing Cento poetry each day using the existing lines from poems in each collection to form a new poem. Miranda Cowley Heller rose to writing fame as author of The Paper Palace, a novel selected by Reese Witherspoon for her book club. Turns out, she’s an amazing poet as well!

You can read more about Miranda Cowley Heller here and here .

Family Secrets

Inside the case were all the photos

Alone at the kitchen table, I still

dig myself out of the sink

and my children cry blood tears for me.

From poems in this order: Salvage; The Taste of Pennies; Half-Life; and The Earth is Flat

A sneak peek of the first ten days of living poets I’m celebrating this month
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Celebrating Living Poets: Natasha Trethewey

During the month of March, as part of the Slice of Life Challenge and the Stafford Challenge, I’m writing Cento poems all month by taking the lines of poetry from living poets and weaving them into a new poem. Today, I’m celebrating Natasha Trethewey, a Pulitzer-Prize winning poet who served as our 19th US Poet Laureate and Mississippi Poet Laureate.

You can read more about Natasha Trethewey at her website and in an interview here and here.

What Happened Next

In 1959, my mother is boarding a train

From every corner of the photograph, flags wave down

The lines of my young father’s face deepen

what’s left is footage: the hours before

Behind us, the skyline of Atlanta

Taken from: The Southern Crescent; Scenes from a Documentary History of Mississippi; Southern Gothic; Providence; Pastoral.

I’ve also used her poetry in the past to inspire other forms, such as Golden Shovels, which use a line vertically to become the beginning or ending words of the lines in the poem. You can see an example of a Golden Shovel here. One of the things I love most about the version of Native Guard that I have is that it came with a CD of Natasha Trethewey reading the poems. And yes, my RAV4 is a 2018, old enough to still have ………..(drumroll please)………a CD player!

A Sneak Peek of the first ten days of the living poets I’m celebrating this month