What is Book Spine Poetry?

Book spine poems are created by stacking books, then reading their titles as though each were a line of verse. This poetic form is known as a cento.

What is a cento?

According to Wikipedia:

A cento is a poetical work wholly composed of verses or passages taken from other authors; only disposed in a new form or order.

My Book Spine Poem

It took a few months of inspiration ping pong between me and Nicole Rivera (@riverand) before I finally got around to stacking some books and snapping a photo. I don’t know why I waited so long. It was so fun and easy to do!

You can check out Nicole’s Book Spine Poetry over at her blog. she even included a YouTube video in which she reads her poem.

Not wanting to risk further procrastination on my part, my book spine poem has no audio accompaniment:

1000 pin up girls
Explaining the universe
Men from earth
Too far from home
The immortalists
Eat more, weigh less
Why stop?
A voice of one’s own

 

Your Book Spine Poetry

See how easy they are to do? Now it’s your turn! After you’ve created your book spine cento, you can have it included in the 2013 Book Spine Poetry Gallery that Travis Jonker (@scopenotes) creates each year in April. Why April? Because April is National Poetry Month.

My Birthday & Blogiversary

Not only was March 9th my birthday, but it was six years ago on that day that I posted my first blog entry here on mentalmosaic.com. Hard to believe I’ve been blogging here that long.

I was living in Naples back in 2007, so my blog was mainly about southern Italy. In fact, it was a blog post about the fine art of Neapolitan jay-walking, that led to my first paid travel writing gig with easyJet in-flight magazine, and even though I’ve shifted from Italy to Texas, there’s still plenty of culture for me to blog about, as you can see from my posts and photos.

A Byteful Birthday Surprise

Y’know how you meet some people online and you just *click* with them? That’s what happened with me and Andrew Crusoe of Byteful Travel. We met because we both host travel themed blog carnivals, and over time have a forged a friendship.

Anyway, for my birthday, Andrew surprised me (and I love surprises!) by posting A Birthday Surprise for Tui Snider, A Good Friend & Fellow Travel Writer Check out his poem! (And while you’re there, poke around his blog for a while – it’s meaty.) I love homemade gifts like that. I’m going to print it out and hang it in my writing nook.

ROW80 check-in

I’ve decided to do take the A to Z blogging challenge for April, thanks to the encouragement of Morgan Dragonwillow (@MDragonwillow). Morgan and I are checking in with each other on Sundays, too, and from what I can tell, it’s keeping us both focused on our writing goals.

As for my music, I posted one of my songs right here on my blog and will continue to do so every couple of weeks. The song is called, “Undertow,” and you can hear it by clicking the link in this post,
Undertow by Mental Mosaic: What Genre is this Song?

ROW80 Linky:

That’s my ROW80 check-in for Sunday. How are your goals coming along? Here are links to all the other Row80 participants. Check them out: