I was interviewing the poet Moná Ó Loideáin Rochelle when I asked her the question I often ask the writers who read for the Windfall Reading Series: “Do you get writer’s block, and if so, how do you deal with it?”
She said yes, she did get writer’s block sometimes. When that happens, she told me, she often turns to the poetic form, the cento, to help her get past it.
Her answer surprised and delighted me. I’d never thought of using a particular form of poetry to chase away writer’s block, but the cento is an intriguing idea.
The word “cento” means “patchwork” in Latin. It’s a fitting name for a form made of lines from other people’s poems, rearranged to create something new. According to The Handbook of Poetic Forms, “Centos go back at least as far as the second century.” Centos were popular until the 17th century; interest in them revived in the 20th. Poets such as John Ashbery, Bob Holman, and David Lehman have written centos. Los Angeles Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson’s latest book, Blue on a Blue Palette, which I reviewed for The Pedestal, contains several centos. Read “Agnosticism” at Poetry Northwest.
As Scott Wiggerman writes in “Rebirthing the Words: Crafting a Cento,” (Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry), “The cento is the perfect form for those who don’t like to write form poems. It doesn’t have a set number of lines. It doesn’t have a set number of stanzas. It doesn’t have a rhyme scheme, though it may have rhyme.”
Writing a cento might be considered a form of tribute to a poet whose work has inspired you. I could easily write centos from the lines of Denise Levertov, Linda Pastan, Ada Limon, Seamus Heaney or Emily Dickinson. Or maybe not so easily. As Wiggerman advises, “the more lines you choose, the more options you’ll have (but more options can also complicate matters).”
Etiquette is vital when writing a cento. You must list the poets whose lines you borrowed, either as a footnote to your poem or in the “Notes” section of a published book. As Wiggerman writes, “keep track of which lines come from which poems.” He does this by adding the name of the poem he borrowed from to the end of the line (the reference will be removed when the poem is completed). “Authors of centos are expected to create a gloss, or a key to the poems that they’ve used.”
“The Egomaniacal Cento” appears at the end of Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop. In this form, you use lines you’ve written, “the ones you’ve discarded from your own poems, the ones sitting in a journal, the best lines from failed poems.” As a person who loves to recycle, this idea appeals to me. And what better way to use those lines you abandoned than to feature them in a new poem?
Although I’ve written villanelles, abecedarians, pantoums, and a sonnet or two, I have never written a cento. I’m not going to wait for writer’s block to start one, though.
I’d love to hear about your experiences writing centos.
Read Mona’s poem, “A Cento: Laudato Si’; Mallarmé Meets Valéry,” at Notre Dame Review.
I find centos vaguely insulting, as if cannibalizing someone else’s poem will somehow result in a coherent, original piece. Like most homophonic workshop poems, like most exercises that valorize chance, the resulting piece is usually a silly jumble of discordant lines, masquerading as profundity.
Only if done badly! Like all poetry. 😊
I love learning about this poetic form new to me. Thanks!
I first discovered Cento from a Dverse prompt several years ago. It is an interesting form/non-form.
The ego centro is something I do regularly!