| Author | Message | ||
| Bren
Advanced Member Username: bren Post Number: 1852 Registered: 12-2001 |
What is "Found Poetry" I think I know but sometimes I think I can count without revealing my toes too but more often than not I find that add and subtract has launched into my shoes. Bren PenShells | ||
| Gary Blankenship
Senior Member Username: garyb Post Number: 10908 Registered: 07-2001 |
Turco has it as a poem found where you would not expect it, such as directions for car repair. Or rearranging a poem to get a new work in a different form. A bit narrow that version, so I prefer a poem inspired (ie found) by a quote we might not think would make a poem. I found one in the Rhyming dictionary: 162.1 belief relief unbelief disbelief misbelief has-relief demirelief demitasse sassafrass Smiles. Gary A River Transformed The Dawg House January 2007 and last FireWeed | ||
| Bren
Advanced Member Username: bren Post Number: 1854 Registered: 12-2001 |
"I prefer a poem inspired (ie found) by a quote we might not think would make a poem." Love this answer Gary. I tried putting up a Challenge at the Shell on just this premise but someone mentioned it might not be too poetic to use a quote if not written by a poet so I took it down, In my mind some quotes inspire so now that you mention what you did I'm thinking to put it back up again. LOL It can't hurt right? And anyway if it doesn't go over well it won't be the first time or the last...  Bren PenShells | ||
| Gary Blankenship
Senior Member Username: garyb Post Number: 10909 Registered: 07-2001 |
Bren, my last Found by a Speech by Henry Clay When a man of peace declares he prefers the “troubled ocean of war demanded by honor” to the “tranquil, putrescent pool of ignominious peace,” you can be sure he has never buried a comrade in the cold Korean ground, heard his lungs dissolve from mustard gas, lost his legs and life to sharks in the South Pacific, firebombed a city, returned home with one hand and one medal after two years as a tunnel rat in a forgotten jungle. When a man of peace declares he prefers war, we are lost even if he recants I was told I should not title found but instead inspired, the narrow defination... Smiles. Gary A River Transformed The Dawg House January 2007 and last FireWeed | ||
| Bren
Advanced Member Username: bren Post Number: 1856 Registered: 12-2001 |
Gary, Your poem is powerful and intense. With inspiration like that who could fail to see what poetry (whether considered found or done ad lib) can do? I think this is one of the finest examples and best reasons for reading the quotes of others and writing from there that I've ever seen. Thank you for posting it Gary. Bren PenShells | ||
| Fred Longworth
Advanced Member Username: sandiegopoet Post Number: 1067 Registered: 05-2006 |
The guerrilla poet Ezra Found (1917-2001) was the principal twentieth-century advocate of poetry-as-theater. During his long career, he left his verses in numerous bizarre locations, each intended to "engage the citizen in the drama of the moment." One of his favorite "games" (as he liked to call them) was to unroll toilet paper in public restrooms, insert one of his poems, and then roll the paper back up again. By her fiftieth birthday (1970) his wife Glenda had more than 200 of his poems tattoed on her body. Over his lifetime, Found -- using ordinary rubber stamps -- placed his poems on more than a million pieces of paper money. Before cell phones made pay telephones a rarity, Found placed thousands of poems inside coin return slots across much of New England. He frequently followed taggers late at night and would spray his own verses atop their territorial renderings. His untimely demise in 2001 followed a brutal street gang's revenge. So there you have it: the true explanation of the "Found Poem." Whatever anyone else tells you is a malicious lie. Fred | ||
| Bren
Advanced Member Username: bren Post Number: 1857 Registered: 12-2001 |
hahaha too funny Fred. It's confetti and writings on the wall, tattoos and toilet water. Rubber stamps and Presidents...Found in high drama and low places. Bren PenShells | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 9645 Registered: 11-1998 |
I thank Fred for information on Mr. Found. The things I learn in this place! *LOL* Unfortunately, though, Bren, he gave you a biography of Mr. Found rather than a definition. Here's the definition: "A found poem describes text lifted out of some original context (a passage in a letter, a newspaper, a business report, etc.) and rearranged to give the appearance, form, or sound we associate with poetry. The found material is thrown into a new, possibly amusing or ironic light by this rearrangement. According to George Hitchcock, editor of the anthology of found poetry Losers Weepers, the main criterion of the form is that it must have been found somewhere amidst the vast sub- or non-literature which surrounds all of us. You cannot make a legitimate found poem out of a prose passage from a novel, for instance, or even from some popular sort of literature, such as The Guinness Book of World Records. While the use of materials to make a found poem is usually sophisticated, or at least self-conscious, the materials themselves must be taken from an innocent or naive context. Whether or not found poetry is art does not concern us here. What is important, however, is that found poetry can help us sharpen our awareness of what might be material for poetry and of how to break a line of free verse. Experiments with found material can also confront the natural rhythms of language. Finally, since found poetry refers to an original source, it is related to the general use of allusion in all poetry." ~ from Writing Poetry: Second Edition by Barbara Drake | ||
| Kathy Paupore
Moderator Username: kathy Post Number: 4627 Registered: 12-2003 |
Bren, Here's one of mine: Somber Remembrance (Found Poem- From September 2002 Newsweek) Americans mark September 11, 2002 with a moment of silence at 8:46 am, and their own somber reflections. One by one the names are called out— more than twenty-eight thousand, each name echoes across the empty hole where the World Trade Center once stood. The main room of Engine 23’s firehouse feels claustrophobic despite it’s substantial size. It is not the heat or crying grandmothers who turned out in their Sunday best to honor the company’s six dead men that stifles us. It is not the tight space, made tighter by rows of grimy helmets and the false cheer of billowing flags. We can’t see what entraps us, but it is filling the space, atom by atom. Somber, the word repeats over and over in midtown Manhattan this morning as New Yorker’s struggle to define their feelings exactly one year after black smoke enshrouded their city. Military personnel salute the Pentagon. Washington doesn’t handle tragedy well; New York, yes, but not Washington. There’s something about the place— too smug, perhaps; too self-righteous; too adept at the political skills of blurring sharp and painful edges. 9-27-02 You're invited to: Wild Flowers "A poem is made up of words and the spaces between them." WCWilliams | ||
| "A-Bear"
Senior Member Username: dane Post Number: 1974 Registered: 11-1998 |
Found this on Valentine's Day: Me | ||
| Christopher T George
Senior Member Username: chrisgeorge Post Number: 6829 Registered: 12-2004 |
Hi all I have a column about found poetry on the Yo Liverpool website, where I am a moderator. Go to http://www.yoliverpool.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3431 Chris Editor, Desert Moon Review http://www.desertmoonreview.com/ Co-Editor, Loch Raven Review http://www.lochravenreview.net/ http://christophertgeorge.blogspot.com/ | ||
| Bren
Advanced Member Username: bren Post Number: 1859 Registered: 12-2001 |
Thank you M! That article puts it all in prospective very nicely. I always worry that found poetry might be considered stealing and I'm absolutely paranoid about that! It's difficult not to let things sink into my mind though so my thoughts and information I've read get mushed together and it's difficult to sort the mess. I always want to give credit where credit is due so knowing the meaning of "Found" is very important.  LOL Dane...  Thanks Chris, I'll check out your link. Kathy, Your poem is intense and powerful like Gary's. Did you ever post this on the crit board? You should if you haven't. I know at first poems about 9/11 were frowned upon at some forums but I never understood why myself. I think it was necessary to write about it and I still think that after all this time. I hope you do post it. Bren PenShells | ||
| Fred Longworth
Advanced Member Username: sandiegopoet Post Number: 1069 Registered: 05-2006 |
Bren, The avertion to "early on" 9/11 poems was -- in my opinion -- significantly based on the inane viewpoint that immediate strong emotional reactions are somehow shallow, simplistic and unrefined and that efforts to express these immediate reactions are often tantamount to grandstanding on the part of the poet ("Look at how MUCH I care", and further that proper aesthetic distance (a la recollections in tranquility) cannot be attained so close in to the tragedy. The fact is: there are early-on reactions to horrible events, and there are later-on reactions, and both are valid. Fred | ||
| Bren
Advanced Member Username: bren Post Number: 1872 Registered: 12-2001 |
The fact is: there are early-on reactions to horrible events, and there are later-on reactions, and both are valid. Amen, pass the biscuits and don't hold the gravy Brother! Bren PenShells | ||
| Kathy Paupore
Moderator Username: kathy Post Number: 4631 Registered: 12-2003 |
Bren, I recently watched "World Trade Center" with Nicholas Cage, a well done movie IMHO. Worth the watch if you like disaster movies. 9-11 hasn't been forgotten, nor do I think the reactions have dulled at least for those closest to ground zero. I think I did post it here maybe in one of M's challenges, but I don't remember if I put it in creative vis. KYou're invited to: Wild Flowers "A poem is made up of words and the spaces between them." WCWilliams | ||
| Bren
Advanced Member Username: bren Post Number: 1877 Registered: 12-2001 |
Well it's very well done start to finish. I'm going to look for the movie although I'm not too into disaster movies I may watch this one. No one should ever forget, I just wish they wouldn't say the war is happening now because of it but then that's opinion not fact and I should shut up before I get started... Bren PenShells |
