[Jim Moonan]

If a poet’s work is to take reality and filter it so that it becomes poetry, then “found” poetry is the fast food of poetry.

I came across this on social media this morning. All I did was reformat it and add a bit to the end.

The challenge is: post a piece of poetry you "found" today...

Here is what I found:

Twisted Logic
xxxx
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-Paul Simon

He didn’t say that
and if he did he didn’t
mean that
and if he did you didn’t
understand it
and if you did it’s not
a big deal
and if it is
others have said
worse.

Glamorous narcissist.
Cult captcha.
Lie lie lie
lie lie lie lie lie lie lie
lie lie lie
lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie.

------------------------

[Martin Elster]

Hi Jim,

I like your poetic response to the Simon quote, but it’s not actually a found poem. Here is a link to what Wikipedia says about found poetry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_poetry

And here is an article from The Found Poetry Review

http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/about-found-poetry/

Poets employ a variety of techniques to create found poetry. Common forms and practices include:

Erasure: Poets take an existing source (usually limited to one or a few pages) and erase the majority of the text, leaving behind select words and phrases that, when read in order, compose the poem. Examples include Tom Phillips’ A Humument, Jen Bervin’s Nets and Austin Kleon’s newspaper blackouts, just to name a few.

Free-form excerpting and remixing: Poets excerpt words and phrases from their source text(s) and rearrange them in any manner they choose

Cento: Poets unite lines from other authors’ writings into a new poem. The original lines remain intact; the main intervention comes in arrangement and form. Read more about centos.

Cut-up: Poets physically cut or tear up a text into words and phrases, then create a poem by rearranging those strips. Arrangement may be intentional or haphazard. Read more about the cut-up method of composition.

[Matt Q]

Jim,

You didn’t understand.
When a man hears fast food

and disregards the rest,
all is poetry.

Tear up Wikipedia,
physically cut up poets,

reformat the morning,
add a newspaper

but remain intact
to the end.

Paul Simon becomes
a new poem.

(cut up from the first two posts)

Matt

[Roger Slater]

I once published a "found" poem in Light. I felt guilty since the only thing I wrote was the title, but it was fully disclosed to John Mella and he didn't mind:


GAINED IN TRANSLATION
a found poem

You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.
Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.
Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.
Would you like to ride on your own ass?
Please leave your values at the front desk.
Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts.
We take your bags and send them in all directions.

[Matt Q]

(Back later)

[Matt Q]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

the only thing I wrote was the title

That's intriguing. How and where did you find it Roger? In one piece? A selection of joke signs? As is, or did you rearrange words?

Matt

[Martin Elster]

Erasure Poem from Words of the First Three Posts

Reality came across and didn’t mean
to create blackouts free from their source.

Unite original or intentional or haphazard
method(s) you didn’t understand.

Disregard the rest
all the morning.

[Martin Elster]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

That's intriguing. How and where did you find it Roger? In one piece? A selection of joke signs? As is, or did you rearrange words?

I have the same questions. I'm intrigued.

[Roger Slater]

It's so long ago I can't remember exactly, but there are tons of comical mistranslations on the internet and I seem to recall that I picked and chose my favorites and chose the sequence. I also recall that I wanted to include a brief note explaining that these were lines gathered off the internet, but the editor chose to omit the note and simply leave the words "found poem" as the only disclaimer. In retrospect, I wish the note had appeared.

[Jim Moonan]

Martin: "I like your poetic response to the Simon quote, but it’s not actually a found poem."


So does it have to be a collage of words pieced together from at least two different sources? (like Roger's and Matt's?) Or can it be created from a single source/paragraph of text?

If I'm wrong about this being found poetry (see link below) at least I serendipitously contributed to Matt's off-the-cuff found poem response : )

You could be misunderstanding this as being my own written poetic response to the Paul Simon epigraph. In fact, it is not. The body of the poem (except for the final stanza) is text I found on social media (FB). All I did was reformat it to give it the “poetry” look and, of course, to place added emphasis where I thought I could with line breaks.

I only added the Simon epigraph after writing the final stanza and noticing that when I read aloud "Lie. Lier. Lie." it sounded like the refrain from Simon's The Boxer.

The "found" text was found here.

Found poetry, as defined by Poets.org, is:

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.

Unless by "outside texts" it means more than one text source needs to be used in order to create a kind of word "collage" pulling from multiple sources, then I think mine is a found poem.

This could be a learning moment for me. One of many I've had here on the Sphere : )
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