Wordsmith’s A.Word.A.Day: The Cento

PRONUNCIATION:

MEANING:

noun: A literary work, especially a poem, composed of parts taken from works of other authors.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin cento (patchwork). Earliest documented use: 1605.

NOTES:

Nobel-prize-winning poet T.S. Eliot’s observation is relevant to centos: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.”

Examples of centos:
The Oxford Cento by David Lehman
The Dong With the Luminous Nose by John Ashbery

USAGE:

“Louis Zukofsky continued to write … a play, a novella, a book of criticism, a 500-page cento of philosophy in homage to Shakespeare …”
Bob Perelman; Finding His Voice; Tikkun (Berkeley, California); May/Jun 2007.

THE CENTO AS A PROMPT:

https://theamericanscholar.org/lets-assemble-a-cento/

https://theamericanscholar.org/our-crowd-sourced-cento-stanza-one/