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Starting this week, let’s assemble a cento. What’s that, you ask? It was “Wordsmith’s” word of the day on March 14, and you can read their write-up here, replete with links to a cento John Ashbery wrote, as well as one that I put together for The New York Times Book Review upon completing The Oxford Book of American Poetry.
In the Times article, I do my best to present a succinct history of the cento, a poem consisting of lines culled from other poems—usually, but not invariably, poems from poets of earlier generations. Historically, the intent was often homage, but it could and can be lampoon. The modern cento has an altogether different rationale and flavor. It is based on the idea that in some sense all poems are collages made up of other people’s words; that the collage is a valid method of composition, and even an eloquent one, as T. S. Eliot shows in “The Waste Land.” Remember Eliot’s motto: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
This is what I propose we do over the next four to six weeks.
For week one, let’s come up with the first four lines of our cento. How? My recommendation is that you assemble on your desk four poetry books—or possibly one anthology—that you like. The poems can differ widely. Step two: choose one line from each of the four poems. You can do this arbitrarily (picking a line at random from page 25 of each volume, for example) or deliberately (recalling a favorite passage—perhaps one you underlined or otherwise noted). Step three: after writing down the lines, play with their order. Run them backward. Maybe line two would work better as line three. Don’t worry overmuch about making sense. Sometimes, as Alice learns in Wonderland, if you take care of the sounds, the sense will take care of itself.
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For more about the cento as a form, and as a prompt, please visit "Next Line, Please" at
https://theamericanscholar.org/lets-assemble-a-cento/#.VSV5I0b7BOZ
and enter your lines in the Comments field.
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