… an ongoing investigation into form… 

Today I’d like to share a writing prompt from Poets & Writers: 

A cento, Latin for “patchwork,” is a poem composed entirely of fragments and lines taken from other poems and/or written sources. Try creating your own patchwork poem by incorporating lines from various poems in a poetry anthology. For inspiration, read David Lehman’s cento in the New York Times.

A true cento is composed entirely of lines from other sources. Early examples can be found in the work of Homer and Virgil.

Here is a fine example called Wolf Cento by Simone Muench

Sources: [Anne Sexton, Dylan Thomas, Larry Levis, Ingeborg Bachmann, Octavio Paz, Henri Michaux, Agnes Nemes Nagy, Joyce Mansour, William Burroughs, Meret Oppenheim, Mary Low, Adrienne Rich, Carl Sandburg]