glengarry renglosa 5

She is able to make the decision to leave Manawaka
though her feet are wrapped in loud music. The weeds
of home strangle her toes ‘til they’re purple and cold,

ready to be placed, fit for the knives,
in jars on the biology room shelf.

These things collected: memories
of fingers, the frustration of hands
grasping at phantoms of bottles, arms

folded, asking you to please leave
exactly as she must have greeted theirs.

line one from CWH
line ten from Elizabeth Bishop “Brazil, January 1, 1502”



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: Under My Flat Eric Hill: Cured
Andy Weaver: A Nagging... Steve McOrmond: You Said the Wind...
return to main ego map return to QWERTY main page

Information supplied by: qwerty@unb.ca
Page designed by: Paul Dechene c/o v2a6@unb.ca
Last update: 1997/04/27