Celebrating the Cento
I have been celebrating the Cento for the entire month of July and I am just not ready to let it go yet! My obsession began when one of my LexPoMo friends shared this poetic delight with me: A LexPoMo Sort of Day: A Cento. I was immediately inspired to create Triginta Cento. Of course, it is always fun to encounter a work that your own inspired, but ever since Pauletta reminded me of this form I have led multiple solo and group cento-focused writing sessions. The Rebel Cartographers are sharing my obsession! The Sawstone Poets too!
According to the Poetry Foundation, cento is from the Latin word for “patchwork garment” and so I have been describing it as a patchwork poem. This is a particularly old poetic form and so I believe it is the original found poem – which may go a long way to explaining why I find it so delightful. The Poetry Foundation offered several examples, but my favorites are Lepidopteran: A Cento, Lullaby of Jazz Land: A Found Poem Comprised of Titles from the American Songbook, and I WANT SKY.
While publishing a cento may be problematic (because of rights), there are ways around that and even so I find them very fun. I highly recommend for those times when your muse is being difficult or you just need to get out of a writing rut. This week I gave the Sawstone Poets two 30-line centos and told them to pick a number then write the line that matched that number for each poem. Some people used those two lines as the opening and closing lines of their poems while others embedded the lines or parts of the lines. And, of course, one can always use the traditional method of finding inspiration from poetry – lifting an idea or image to launch your writing.
I composed the Triginta Cento by revisiting my daily LexPoMo log posts and grabbing a line from one of the poems included in each daily post which means I could write at least four more of these in the future, but I am trying to focus my future centos on public domain works or my own poetry so I do not need to worry about rights! However, it is really fun to play with a collection of poems written by your friends so I’m probably not done with LexPoMo centos just yet. Note: you can find links to the source poems here: Triginta Cento.
What fun can you imagine finding with this form?
Image by Candace Hunter from Pixabay
