cento

Author’s Note: A cento, from the Latin for “patchwork,” is a collage poem composed of lines from other sources.

From Scientific American ● Feb. 4, 2023

If not, it should, for Robert Irwin’s ingenious historical fantasy “Wonders Will Never Cease” is a contemporary novelist’s version of the poetic form known as a cento.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 27, 2017

While reading a cento, one savored its imaginative repurposing of bits from Horace, Virgil and any number of lesser ancients.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 27, 2017

The "General Intercession," for example, on page 50 of The Book Annexed, is a cento to which Taylor is the chief contributor.

From A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer by William Reed Huntington

In its original form, the cento takes small pieces of familiar works such as the Aeneid and reassembles the segments—anywhere from a few words to two full lines—into a new text.

From Alida or, Miscellaneous Sketches of Incidents During the Late American War. Founded on Fact by Amelia Stratton Comfield

And so, I wanted to do what I could to discourage people from doing that and that's where the centos come in.

From Salon ● Mar. 5, 2019

This was afterwards applied metaphorically to those well-known poems called centos, composed of shreds and patches of poetry, collected from all quarters.

From Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 2 by Isaac Disraeli

Parables and brief discourses, or rather, centos of religious and ethical exhortations and injunctions.

From Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays by Thomas Henry Huxley

Fine writing is with him all verbiage and monotony—a translation into classical centos or hexameter lines.

From Hazlitt on English Literature An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature by Jacob Zeitlin

In 1712, he published his "Rural Sports," and dedicated it to Pope, who was then rising toward the ascendant, having just published his brilliant tissue of centos, the "Essay on Criticism."

From The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase With Memoirs and Critical Dissertations, by the Rev. George Gilfillan by