Ann, Yes, I think it is. And a good one. A profound one, in my eyes. What makes found poetry art is how well the poet holds up what he/she has found to catch the light just right. What I see is an ugly two-headed creature: the terrorist and the capitalist. It is like a punch in the gut.

Some other thoughts...

• The page notations anchor this nicely.
• The juxtaposition of the facing pages is fascinating and is what makes this piece so compelling. These two lines/facing pages are incredible:

xxxxxxx42. Women covered in dust, running, each holding a terrified child...
xxxxxxx43. Why just wash away the day when you can wash away the years? Olay.

• I think it also flirts with being an ekphrastic. The italicized parts are “found” and the unitalicised parts are shades of an ekphrastic description. (Although I shudder to think that I'm wrong about what is both "found poetry" and "ekphrastic poetry" : )
• What gives this it’s punch, I think, is that it is an excellent retrospective snapshot of things that captures the unexpected. Like a photograph taken when no one knew the camera was pointing at them that reveals something no one thought was there.

I had hoped for more response to this thread for exactly the reason this found poem of yours demonstrates. It got off to a rough start with the misunderstanding I guess and everyone walked away… thanks for walking back : )
x

Maybe a lost and found poem--

FARKLEBERRY FOUND
—found poem from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

You can't miss the
farkleberry.
It's right up there
on page 416—
the first entry—
a shrub or small tree
of the heath family
of the southeastern
United States
having a black berry
with stony seeds.

I'm no expert (ha), but I don't think this is found poetry, Edmund. I don't want to venture to say why exactly because I'm a little hesitant to put my foot in my mouth again : )

I don't think it is for the same reason I don't think mine is if we are using this definition:

A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.

Matt's #3, Roger's #4 and Martin's #7 are pure found poetry.

But yours seems to be more like quoting the dictionary. At the very least I would put lines 6-11 in italics.

Of course, if Michael Cantor is saying "damn the definitions" and that found poetry is kind of like haiku poetry in the sense that there are many adaptations to the form that are acceptable, well.................................. I'm lost.
x
x

Well, Jim, to quote our go-to Cantor again, damn the definitions. You say it's a quotation from a dictionary. Well, hell, that's what found poetry is, at least what I've seen, quotations. You find something, take it out of context, and it reads like, or is, poetry.

I shouldn't have added the explication to the poem so let's just call it a lost poem, one of my many.

Lost poems. Now that to me sounds more interesting than found poems.

Cheers,
John

Indeed, John. Here are a few lines on the subject from a rather pretentious glosa I wrote. It is of some concern to me that the poet publishing a "true" (by Jim's definition) "found" poem should acknowledge the lostness of the words and the luck of the foundness.

Found poems are a labour-saving caper
(Best to ignore the fact that someone lost them).
A painless, mindless way of filling paper.
Old boundaries collapse after you’ve crossed them.
The laundry list, the memo, the prescription;
It’s written – rip it off and put it in!
The condom packet and the job description…
Art is a buffet lunch - sod discipline;
Love bids you welcome. Blunder through and grab
What turns you on. But pick up your own tab.

(The [last half of the] last line was, of course, determined by the cabeza, but I was delighted by the way it underlined my point and chose to overlook the fact that the glosa is, itself, one of the earliest instances of "found poetry". Innit.)

Ann, this "lost and found" poem of yours is the true definition.
x

Hi Ann,

Stopping by to say I like your poem very much.

Cheers,
John

I think Plato would have been cozy with the thought that poets dip into The Well of Lost Poems by remembering them. I fear to imagine what the true Ideal Forms are of the stuff in the neighboring “Exquisite” threads. I and my wife went to a meeting of Andrei Codrescu and his crew of synchronized foot scrubbers two or three years back (maybe four), and were appalled by his rudeness to outsiders.

Never dare a fool...
 

I removed this to work on it a bit more. I'll repost it later.