This week, Tricia's Monday Poetry Stretch was to write a fairy-tale inspired poem, and I couldn't resist. Please go see the other poems; they are marvelous.
NOTE: A cento is a poem made from other poems, and in this one, written for the Frog Princes, I only used poems with the word LEAP in them. At the bottom of the post are the sources for each of my lines, beginning with the title, "and we leap up to become."
A Cento for The Frog Princes
and we leap up to become
My heart leaps up when I behold
a bridge that leaps from her hot red hands.
The dancers take turns leaping over the bonfire,
to delight thee with fantastic leaping
ease, like teenage boys leaping for rebounds.
This music leaps from key to key
and a terrier is leaping like a flea.
Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds.
Leap to the right! Grab!
Run the rapid and leap the fall
at any moment. Leap from a skewed bowl!
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer––
With a tiger-leap half way, now she meets the coming prey––
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
tightening,
My tongue leapt out of my mouth
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—
leaping…illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time
between,
Well, it's gone now: The leaping light.
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide.
He leapt into the blue dark––
For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,
In me all's sunk that leapt, and all that dreamed.
1 Vacation, by Rita Dove
2 My Heart Leaps Up, by William Wordsworth
3 Dishwater, by Ted Kooser
4 A group of girls from Minnesota or black mascara,
by Maureen Owen
5 Endymion, by John Keats
6 ars Poetica, by Anthony Butts
7 J. S. Bach: F# Minor Toccata, by Bill Holm
8 Looking Around, Believing by Gary Soto
9 Venus and Adonis, by William Shakespeare
10 Arms, by Richard Tayson
11 The Song Of The Chattahoochee, by Sidney Lanier
12 Apples, by Grace Schulman
13 Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, lines 695-768 by Christopher Smart
14 The Kitten and the Falling Leaves, by William Wordsworth
15 I Sing the Body Electric, by Walt Whitman
16 Frog, by Chard deNiord
17 "Out, Out—" by Robert Frost
18 Howl, by Allen Ginsberg
19 Ghost Notes, by Ralph Burns
20 Still I Rise, by Maya Angelou
21 Trickster, by Sherwin Bitsui
22 The Storm, by Theodore Roethke
23 The Suicide, by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poetry Friday is hosted today by the entertainingly titled blog, Critique de Mr. Chompchomp
