Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it. Hannah Arendt
Yesterday I mentioned working with found poetry or using snippets of text from one or many sources arranged into a poem. Jim’s comment about giving a few more examples inspired this post. Thanks Jim! P.S. Jim’s blog today has a great post on confident writing and a link to his guest post on power.
I found this informative article on found poetry by Katie Haegele. And then an example of one of her found poems. She using a section of a vintage Boy Scouts manual to form a poem. For me the idea of found poetry or found text poetry is to see poetry everywhere and to play with words and language.Enjoy words. You can photocopy a section from a book and literally cut and paste your words onto a new document. For many beginning poets this lessens some of the fear associated with
writing an original work. Many altered art artists use found text or found poetry to add another dimension to their art work.
Today, think about how play can add to your creative body of work. Take something you’ve written and photocopy it. Add scissors and paste. Cut out words or phrases. Arrange text. Don’t worry about the right way or the wrong way. PLAY.Now get back to work!
Lovingly,
The Writing Nag
*My found poem on this post.
Snippets of text
add scissors and paste
take something
creative
powerful writing
arrange text
paste your words
PLAY
Okay, I’m game. Here’s the best I could come up with:
Power Cuts
Yesterday I found
a text in a book
written with scissors
the words literally
cut out of page.
It gave the language
another dimension
beginning with thought
but closest to poetry.
Thanks Jim! I love it, especially the last stanza.
I reworked that poem last night and this is what I ended up with now that I have the whole English language to choose from:
Paper Cuts
Today I found a
poem in a book
written with scissors,
words literally
cut out of each page.
It gave the poem
a new dimension:
sliced wide open and
gutted of meaning
the text was waiting
to be fulfilled.
Actually, looking back on the found poem I was surprised to find out how structured it was considering what I had to work with. It was an interesting exercise but I do prefer the second version. I guess I just like my poetry with a bit more polish. It’s a good way to generate new ideas without a doubt.