hwithumalut

A heroic crown of cut up poems is a series of poems generated from cutting up other works with scissors, assembled like the old form called a heroic crown of sonnets. That form features a circle of 14 sonnets each having the last line of the previous one as its first line. Like a wreath of words fit for the head of a queen. Then there is one extra sonnet, the Mastersonnet, which is formed of all the first and last lines of the lesser sonnets who make up the wreath. I particularly like the cut up technique because it can form completely new poems without much labor. It’s almost like cheating! But it’s more like arranging flowers.

First cut up poem Without any methodical study or knowledge of nature Coming for to carry me home through the marsh Drest beautiful with all the flowers of spring

Second cut-up poem Drest beautiful with all the flowers of spring With you we wander through primeval oaks and aspens As thy sweet music stirs the sylvan leaves

Third cut up poem As thy sweet music stirs the sylvan leaves To a mist-clogged summit fading by the impartial neutrality of your eyes Without any methodical study or knowledge of nature

Master cut-up poem Without any methodical study or knowledge of nature Drest beautiful with all the flowers of spring As thy sweet music stirs the sylvan leaves

I thought it would be amusing for me to try to find the sources of these lines. I’ve actually read a few of the sources just sort of using old texts as a place to scope up words.

Line one of the first poems is likely from Kant. I randomly grabbed a bunch of his sandy sentences to fill my cut up jug a while ago. The second line of each of the three poems is edited. The second of the first is from an African American spiritual. The third line is plucked from a poem by Thomas Chatterton. That line in the middle of poem two is from Lovecraft’s poem dedicated to Lord Dunsany. I really butchered the center of the third, and I can’t find its writer. Originally it went “to a summit faded by the identical neutrality of the pit” which I imagine would be findable if someone was truly curious. But I can't do it.