A Gathering of Centos
by
Published under her pseudonym A. Garnett Weiss, Bricolage is JC Sulzenko’s first collection of centos. The 62 poems in Bricolage use lines or partial lines written by poets living or passed, international or Canadian, well or lesser known, to create a new work, independent in form and meaning from its sources. For each cento’s lines, keys provide full attribution to the source poem and poet, and bibliographical notes list the individual collections and anthologies Weiss consumed. Poetry writers and readers will enjoy the collage in words that this unique collection offers.
“Writing centos offers the thrill of the chase. Wherever I go, I approach shelves of used books or new releases as an adventure…
I read voraciously, in a predatory way. I note lines that stay with me. I live with them— sometimes for a day, sometimes for a month—until a title or a first line suggests itself, and other lines I select follow and fall into place. In a way, the cento tells its own story.
This process, akin to ‘bricolage’ lets me use what comes to hand to create a new poem… in which poets from different eras and continents enter into a dialogue through me with each other or with themselves. While the lines may be theirs, the cento is mine.”
From the Preface to Bricolage
Gregory Betts, author of Psychic Geographies and Other Topics wrote:"Just when we need to refashion and repurpose comes Bricolage, leading us back to the origins of the poem as ‘a thing made’. From bits and pieces, A. Garnett Weiss has carefully stitched together poems that present themselves as entirely fresh and hauntingly new, while paying homage to the originals. A tour de force."
Keith Garebian, author of Against Forgetting wrote:"Bricolage resounds with the echo of greatness, finely chiseled into a composition, a recomposition, a deposition on the value of recurrence. They signal a new way to read the world and find rich golden veins in borrowed words."
"This meticulously assembled collection radiates wit and sensitivity, its poems entering the heart through the mind, with the best ones shimmering like the aurora borealis while dealing with inscrutability, impermanence, and the vagaries of the psyche."
