glengarry renglosa 4

I saw great things mirrored in littleness,
stones rattled in hubcaps, birds became
“M”s or crowns; half-mouths, almost smiling.

Close kin to “L” for love, strong, maternal,
and “N,” the nexus: flesh and bone where inheritance meets.

There burns a ligament, taut yet
strumming. The body sings
the sinus hum in a syllable,

rains through the air, hangs there like
all the women in town.

line one from Edith Sitwell “Poet Laments the Coming of Old Age”
line ten from CWH



The renglosa form is a hybrid of several elements: The renga, which is a kind of group meditation form where, in this case, four writers take turns writing sequences of two or three lines using only the last writer's preceding line as a starting point... a variation on the exquisite corpse form surrealists worked with. Our particular spin was the genetic splicing of the renga with the glosa, which uses lines from other works as a beginning point (and in our variation an ending point as well). The final element was a kind of alcohol induced euphoria as we toiled away in one of our favourite bars. The sources quoted are referred to at the end of each renglosa; CWH is, in fact, the Canadian Writer's Handbook. Enjoy.


Connected areas:
Paul Dechene: There are secrets... Eric Hill: Far, Invisible
Andy Weaver: Stargazing Steve McOrmond: Armchair
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Last update: 1997/04/27