Tuesday poem: Link to a found poem
September 2, 2014
I’ve been thinking about found poems recently, that is, poems made from bits of text found in other poems, or elsewhere (signs, newspapers, comments on blogs). Famously, Voltaire wrote that “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.”
I think recycling is a better metaphor. Although some types of recycling become vandalism: you know, where someone cuts all the pictures out of an old book, or makes a bag from an old volume of say, Voltaire. “Look, I’m an intellectual. I carry my smartphone in something that could once be read.”
But a found poem can be an interesting mutant. Something as dangerously delicious as a mushroom can sprout from other people’s words. A spore type of poetry? An unhappy monster?
Click this link to find a poem about a found poem who hates being just that. In fact, he is a lost and found poem, who finds himself at Verity La:
http://verityla.com/thy-poetry-and-thy-pathos-all-so-strange-ps-cottier/
Other Tuesday poets may have found their poems on the beach, or at least made them up from lines from letters in a number of bottles. Those which were empty of wish-granting genies, that is.
Click this feather, dropped by a seagull, and find out:
PS Cottier 
Love the poem – very clever, joining up different source texts. I recently came across a found poem writing technique where you black out all the words in the source text that you don’t want in the poem but leave the black-outs present – much like a document redacted by censors before public release.
Thank you Keith. Must try one of those erasure poems some time. Though I think I prefer finding things to crossing out words.
I like the idea of this being a lost and found poem. Great post! And Keith — what an interesting idea.
I also loved the image they chose to go with the poem, Michelle. A graffiti Frankenstein’s monster is not to be sneered at!