Cento Weekly Challenge #4:

Polish your gold!

This challenge has two parts, A & B.

(A) Polish your gold into a finished cento. Read the cento aloud as you continue to refine it. This will help you identify spots that are unclear or rough. Feel free to tweak the lines so that the cento

• has consistent tense (e.g., past or present)

• has consistent voice (e.g., first-person “I” or second-person “you”)

• has agreement in singular or plural nouns

• has adequate transition words (e.g., “but” or “because”)

Keep track of your tweaks in case you want to indicate them in part B.

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(B) Once you’re happy with your cento, make an annotated version that indicates your sources. Here’s one of my annotated centos, as an example.

I often annotate my cento this way:

• List the publishing information of the book(s) that served as my source(s) at the bottom of the cento. (In this question, the book is Staying Power 2.)

• At the end of each excerpt within the poem, I write the page number of the source in which I found it.

• Sometimes I also italicize my minor tweaks of the original wording.

No major rules here! Develop an annotation method that suits you.

Have a suggestion for how to annotate, based on your work? Share it in the comments.

P.S. If you’d like to chat with other Rafters about this quest, get the Raft app! Look for the 30-Day Quest thread to connect with other questers!

P.S.S. Remember our “Cento Celebration” at 6:00PM Central on February 27! Have you registered yet? Register here!