James Laughlin
In Hac Spe Vivo
My head can lend no succour
to my heart because her face
is beyond all wonder she is
like diamond to glass when
her eyelids part their fringes
of bright gold and when
to the lute she sings she
makes the nightbird mute
gods why do you make us love
your goodly gifts and snatch
them right away I marvel how
the fish do live in the sea
but patience gazes on the
graves of kings (and mine).
[All of the phrases, except the connectives, are, with some modification from Pericles.
The patchwork Cento, a work composed with passages from an earlier author, has an ancient lineage. In the Princeton Encyclopedia, R. J. Getty tells us that the earliest known example is by one Trygaeus who made his own poem with lines from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Virgil was much ‘centoed’, as in the Cento nuptialis of Ausonius. In Italy there was a Petrarca spirituale (1536) and in England a Cicero princeps (1608). See J. O. Delepierre, Tableau de la littérature du centon chez les anciens et chez les modernes (1874-5).]
Page(s) 102
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The