SARA VILLA & THE BEAUTIFUL LANES

 

 

For many, if not most, people, the pandemic has changed how we engage with work, ideas and creative practice. Sara Villa writes from Montreal:

This week I experimented with centos and collages and it felt liberating. This is a cento I wrote accompanied by a collage created using a film still from a movie by Man Ray, the picture of a sky from a magazine and an old map of NYC. 

The beautiful lanes of sleep

I dreamed again you were alive, and woke. 

I figured you'd hear me sooner or later. 

It's 12:10 in New York and I am wondering 

what now? 

I'm tired of these big things happening

on faded maps of America. 

Line sources:

1) Alun Lewis, "The Sentry" 

2) Anne Michaels, "I Dreamed Again" 

3) Diane Di Prima, "Conversations" 

4) Frank O'Hara, "Adieu to Norman" 

5) ruth weiss, "Single Out" 

6) Joanne Kyger, "As Ever" 

7) Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "The Jack of Hearts" 

Collage image sources: Man Ray, film still from “L’étoile de mer,” 1928; old map of NYC; sky from an unknown magazine picture.

Sara Villa works and writes in the fields of jazz, 20th-century poetics, and film. Her monograph on the film adaptation of Woolf's Orlando (I due Orlando: Le poetiche androgine del romanzo woolfiano e dell’adattamento cinematografico) is published by CUEM, Milan. Sara is based in Montreal.