Eleven days into this poetry project I have been struck by a sniffly, achy head cold — not to mention that I spent eight hours yesterday navigating gas-station panhandlers and flood advisories on I-25 coming back from Santa Fe.  I’m sure my marathon-running friends can tell me stories of the difficulty of the middle third part of a race, which is where I’m at in this writing project.  I almost didn’t submit anything today because I want to take the time to do justice to the next poem in my “Invention of Color” series, neither do I want to interrupt it.

Instead, I put together a “Cento.”  I won’t say I wrote a Cento because it is a form in which each line is taken from another existing poem.  This one “Cento, with head cold” is created exclusively from lines taken from books that I bought at the Glen Workshop (with the exception of the first line, which is my favorite line from Emily Dickinson to quote when I’m experiencing writer’s block). I owe a debt of foggy,cold-meds gratitude to Karen An-Hwei Lee who made me aware of this form when she included a beautiful one in her reading at Glen this past Thursday.  Karen’s was lovingly knit together with lines from poems written by students in her workshop and it was very warmly received.  I’ll return to my color series tomorrow, but for now, I need some rest!

As a reminder, the goal of this project is to help Tupelo raise money for it’s publishing endeavors.  If you are able, consider giving $5 on my behalf to help out.  Here is the link to their online donation system. Thanks!