Guidelines for the NaPoMo Cento Contest

Thanks for your interest in the National Poetry Month Cento Contest! 36 poet judges graciously join me to choose our three winners. The prizes: a selection of the judges' signed books for each winner. For more about the judges, please click here or scroll down to visit the post below. Here is your complete list of contest guidelines:

1. On April 21st, all day long, I Tweeted lines of poetry from the Academy's Poem-A-Day Archive. You can collect these lines by scrolling back through the @POETSorg Twitter feed, or you can read them on this blog by clicking here or scrolling down past the contest entries.
2. Please assemble these lines into a cento (see below for definition). 
3. By NOON EST on April 23rd, post only your cento, real name or pseudonym (whichever your prefer), and a valid means of contact in the comments section of this post. Email addresses should be formatted thus: * yourname [at] provider [dot] com * to keep your email safe from spam. You may also include special instructions on how to format your cento in the post, should your entry be particularly complex. I'll do my best!
4. NOTE: Please do not include bios, images of yourself and/or publications, bibliographies of your work, or the like. Entries that do not follow the guidelines, or arrive after noon EST on April 23rd will not be posted. NOTE: You may enter twice if you, like. Two centos at most!
5. I will post your cento as its own entry on this blog as soon as possible (note that this may take a few hours, particularly for entries that arrive in the morning!). Please feel free to link to your poem or the blog on Facebook or your own website, and, of course, to Tweet about it!
6. On April 24th, please double check to ensure that your entry has appeared in the comments section and on the blog. This doubling will ensure that every entry is accounted for. Should the cento volume exceed my expectations (yay!), I'll post an update on my progress.
7. By April 27th, each judge will send me a list of three top picks for winning cento (click here or scroll down for a complete list of judges!).
8. By April 30th, I'll tally the judges' votes and announce our three winners.
9. By April 30th, I'll also get in touch with the winners to request a mailing addresses for the wonderful prizes of our judges' signed books! Please note: the prize books can be sent to only a US or Canadian mailing address, though entries may come from anywhere!

Below, you'll find the contest FAQ. If you have a question I haven't predicted, please leave it in the comments section. To keep things manageable, I will only approve comments on this post in the form of contest entries or practical questions about procedure. Love notes, asides, critiques, flames, troll talk, ads for pills and potions, and fond reminiscence will have to, alas, get posted on your own blog. Do feel free, though, to share kind words on those centos you admire in other posts. Now, just the FAQs:

• Who is running this contest? I, Danielle Pafunda, am the source and driver of this cento contest, though the Academy of American Poets has kindly handed me the keys to the Twitter feed! 
• What if I missed some of your Tweets? At the end of the day on April 21st, I'll repost all the lines I tweeted here on this blog, in case you missed a few! You can also see just what's been Tweeted from @Poets by visiting or subscribing to the RSS feed: feed://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/7235452.rss
• How many of the Tweeted lines should be used to construct the cento? As few or as many as you like.
• May I add lines not sourced from the Twitter feed? No, I'm sorry, you may not.
• Must I use the entire line? May I break the line? Etc.? I'm inclined to be a bossy boots and say you must use the whole line as I Tweeted it, but what's the fun in that? Do as you will!
• May I alter the punctuation of these lines? Yes, you may!
• May I add images, audio files, videos, hyperlinks, or the like to these lines? Yes, you may! If you have special instructions for formatting a particularly complex cento, please include them with your entry and I will do my best!
• Where did you get these excellent judges? I posted a call on Facebook and a few listserves, and encouraged folks to pass it along. Judges generously volunteered their services, and chose the books they would contribute to the prize booty. 
• What are your guidelines for judges? Judges will simply read the entries and rank in order their top three picks. Judges are on their honor to exclude the poems of particular dear friends, students, loved ones, and the like from their consideration. 
• What if I am a dear friend, student, or loved one of a judge? May I still enter? Oh, yes! Please do. The judge with whom you're close will not be able to vote for you, but the other 35 will. That's a lotta judges!
• Why isn't this contest anonymous? One of the pleasures of the contest comes from seeing our cento anthology build! I hope entrants will enjoy being in each other's fine company. If you'd prefer to enter under a pseudonym, feel free, but be sure you've given me a valid form of contact. Please keep in mind that I'm administering the contest solo; it's got to be easy to keep track of everyone!  
• What if I am not comfortable leaving my email address in the comments section? Just be sure I have some way to get in touch with you--a blog, a Facebook page, your work/faculty/staff bio page containing contact info, or the like. I won't publish this information in the cento post. It will only appear in your comment. 
• Entries are due 36 hours after your last Tweet? Yep!
• May I turn in an entry before you're done Tweeting? Yes; you may turn in an entry as soon as you feel you've enough to complete it.
• What if something weird happens to the Twitter feed? We'll do our best to muddle through together! 
• Um, what's a cento? Please see below.

*Cento definition courtesy of The Academy of American Poets:

Poetic Form: Cento
From the Latin word for "patchwork," the cento is a poetic form made up of lines from poems by other poets. Though poets often borrow lines from other writers and mix them in with their own, a true cento is composed entirely of lines from other sources.   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: 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-- 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 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.