Cento or Mosaic poetic form, It's all about those 'snippets' and more Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hi all.

I just came across this poetic form from a few different sites.  

For those who love the 'snippet' and 10-word' challenges we offer in the ACROPOLIS forum - check this out:


Cento:

From the Latin word for "patchwork," the cento is a poetic form made up of lines from poems by other poets. It is a poem that is simply "patched together".  It is also called by some, a mosaic poem.  

Though poets often 'borrow' lines or phrases from other writers and mix them in with their own (that would be Cleo's snippet challenge responses  ), a true cento is composed entirely of lines or phrases from other authors' works. Early examples can be found in the work of Homer and Virgil.

With lines from Charles Wright, Marie Ponsot, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, and Samuel Beckett, the staff of the Academy of American Poets composed the following as an example (as found on this web link):

"In the Kingdom of the Past, the Brown-Eyed Man is King
Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree
Day after day, I become of less use to myself,
The hours after you are gone are so leaden."

*quoted from weblink above:
"Modern centos are often witty, creating irony or humor from the juxtaposition of images and ideas. Two examples of contemporary centos are "The Dong with the Luminous Nose," by John Ashbery and Peter Gizzi's "Ode: Salute to the New York School." Ashbery's cento takes its title from the poem of the same name by Edward Lear and weaves together an unlikely array of voices, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, T. S. Eliot, and Lord Byron. Gizzi employed the form to create a collage of voices, as well as a bibliography, from the New York School poets."

A Cento/patchwork/mosaic poem can be rhymed or unrhymed.

It can be created with an emphasis on lines or phrases, or the lines/phrases might be chosen because they contain a focused concordance of a specific word.

*quoted from the weblink here:

"It's not enough to simply choose random lines; the patchwork poem itself should make some kind of sense.  Only if some humor centers on the use of truly familiar lines can a mere nonsensical patchwork work--as in the best-known cento in the English language, the poem titled "Familiar Lines."

The cento evidently originated in ancient Greece; examples are found in Aristophanes's plays where lines have been usurped from Aeschylus and Homer.  Roman poets, as early as the late second century, lifted lines from Virgil, as did the fourth century Latin poet Proba Falconia, ninth century Waldram, and seventeenth century Scottish poet Alexander Ross, writing in Latin.  

The earliest extant patchwork poem in English was published in 1775, written to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday.  It was comprised of lines from Shakespeare's plays, though the author took liberal poetic license in changing the lines to suit his purpose.  The purist refuses to change even the tense of a verb--the trick--the challenge--is to create a new verse, while staying true to the original lines as they are placed into their new mosaic."


A few examples:

The "Dark" Side of Poe*

In visions of the dark night  
His countenance was of a dark snuff color.  
On the dark part of the satellite  
The world grew dark before mine eyes.  
Dark draperies hung upon the walls  
Through many dark and intricate passages.  
Soon after dark they arrived  
By a cluster of dark rocks.  

It was a dark night when I bade her goodbye  
Above those dark and hideous mysteries.  
The earth grew dark and its figures passed by.  
It was soon after dark on this same evening  
St. Eustace called for me at dark.  
A feeble cry arose from a dark object that floated rapidly by.  
The horrors of this dark deed are known only to one or two.  
After dark bitterly did we now regret.  

It was dark--all dark.  

Copyright  © 2002, William T. Delamar
                                -  
* All "dark" lines patchworked from Edgar Allan Poe's Works.



Hope Over Doubt *

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
Still do the stars impart their light.
What is your substance, where of are you made?
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife
To see the world in a grain of sand.

Say not the struggle naught availeth.
He that is down needs fear no fall.
All is best, though we oft doubt.
Go and catch a falling star.

Copyright  © 2001, William T. Delamar
Line:
1) "Sonnet ii" (William Shakespeare);  
2) "Falsehood" (William Cartwright);  
3) "Sonnet v" (William Shakespeare);  
4) "Answer" (Sir Walter Scott);  
5) "Augeries of Innocence" William Blake;  
6) "Say not the Struggle Naught (Arthur Hugh Clough);  
7) "The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation" (John Bunyan);  
8) "Samson Agonistes ii" (John Milton);  
9) "song" (John Donne)



"Write" Lines Usurped from Shakespeare *

Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number ho;
When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?
But to write and read comes by nature;
To live still and write mine epitaph.

Why should I write this down, that's so riveted?
Oh blame me not if I no more can write.
But I will write again;
Write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan.

Take forth paper, fold it, write upon it;
So to the laws at large I write.
I'll call for pen and ink and write my mind;
For who's so dumb that cannot write?

Copyright © 2000 Gloria T. Delamar
* Concordance of Shakespeare's "write" lines:  
1) Antony and Cleopatra 3-2;  
2)Loves' Labour's Lost 4-3;
3) Much Ado About Nothing 3-3;  
4) Measure for Measure 4-1;  
5) Cymbeline 2-2;  
6) Sonnet 1-1;  
7) Romeo and Juliet 5-2;  
8) Love's Labour's Lost 3-1;  
9) Macbeth 5-1;  
10) Love's Labour's Lost 1-1;  
11) 1 Henry VI 5-3;  
12) Sonnet 1-1

[Cleo_Serapis]

bump

[Cleo_Serapis]

Cool!  :cool: Here is the result of our first team effort with this Cento form...

Enjoy!
~Cleo  :dance:

The Calling
by Arnfinn, Cleo_Serapis, Cybele and Ephiny

If a clod be washed away by the sea
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
A willow-bough, distilling odorous dew,
In withered husks of some dead memory.
Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view.

The sky is changed to brass, the earth to sand;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade.
And if I dreamed, I dreamed of that far land,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade.
The accuser of sins by my side doth stand,
And here, man, here's the wreath I've made.

Truth rose once more, perforce, to meet mankind,
O, hush -- for He that made us all is by!
With a despotic sway all giant minds
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye...

Greets you, among the crowd of the new-born
Out of the mouth of plenty's horn.


01) For Whom The Bell Tolls by John Donne
02) The Old Fools (Philip Larkin)
03) Sonnet I: From Fairest Creatures We Desire Increase, William
Shakespeare
04) ENDYMION (book 11) S420: John Keats
05) Desespoir by Oscar Wilde
06) Paradise Lost by John Milton
07) The Poet's Calendar (July) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
08) From Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
09) The Search For The Nightingale by W.F.Turner
10) In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke
11) I Rose Up at the Dawn of Day by William Blake
12) A SHROPSHIRE LAD  XLIV   V7 L/2 by A.E. Housman  
13) A Legend of Truth by Rudyard Kipling
14) Death by James Leigh Hunt
15) The Coliseum by Edgar Allan Poe
16) Work Without Hope by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
17) To Lucia at Birth by Robert Graves
18) A Prayer for my Daughter by WB Yeats