The cento (from the Latin word for “patchwork”) is a collage poem, stitched together from lines taken from other poems. Here’s where you can read centos online.
“Approaching a Significant Birthday, He Peruses
The Norton Anthology of Poetry” is a most excellent cento constructed from the classics in that most classic of anthologies, taken from R.S. Gwynn’s book
No Word of Farewell: Selected Poems, 1970-2000 and reposted at the Writ on Water blog.
Cento Bingo is a literary party game devised by the folks at
Forklift, Ink., which results in 5-line centos posted on the Cento Bingo blog site.
John Ashbery’s cento poem takes its title from Edward Lear, and uses lines from everywhere: nursery rhymes, Shakespeare, Eliot, Hopkins, Wordsworth, Arnold, etc. Doug Kirschen has posted the poem in split screen format with links to each line’s source poem.
“Ecstatic Permutations,” published in
Perihelion, is a cento made from one line out of each of the poems in the anthology
Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms edited by David Lehman.
A “stitched together” poem, 50 lines taken from 50 different poems in 28 different languages, written for the Frankfurt Buchmesse 50th Anniversary by Poetry Guide Bob Holman.
This is not a cento in the traditional sense made by one poet quoting lines from other poets’ work — rather, it’s a collaborative poem, made by many poets, each contributing one 12-word line. Participants in 2008’s Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, D.C. read the poem in front of the White House. YouTube has
the performance in video.
This collage is a commemoration of David Lehman’s experience editing the
Oxford Book of American Poetry, made from lines selected from the anthology and later published in the
New York Times.
