Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts
By Alyce Wilson
April 4, 2008 - Found Poetry
This is National Poetry Writing Month, where poets are challenged to write a poem every day. I'll be taking that challenge, though I'm not likely to share my poems online. In honor of NaPoWriMo, though, here are some items I found that could be considered found poems.
First up, a crumpled piece of paper with three words and a sentence, probably part of a vocabulary exercise. Simple, but impressionistic, much like a haiku.
miserable black coal
miserable
is black and dark like a lump
of coal
The next piece is really hard to read, since it was very damaged when I found it, and it had been written in pencil. Consider it a poetry fragment by an ancient poet. This is particularly appropriate, given the subject matter.
me ion
Ocean Rome
is in
Rome and it
heels
you /
migratory
when you have
leprosy
Next is a piece could be considered a combination prose poem (because of the lack of attention to line breaks) and concrete poem (because of the use of typographical characteristics to add a visual component to free verse). While I think it's actually the aborted beginning of a story, the quirky diction converts it into the poetic, reminding me of some of John Lennon's absurdist free verse. I call this one "The Ride That Was."
Chi
chi chi
Bang
Bang Chi
Sl
Sl Sl Sl ideeee
Olive was frightened to deaf.
Her long brown wavy hair
scrambled all over her pale
and glisting eyes. She hollerd
she sreamed "let me of.
NOW! NOW! NOW
the ride was about to
go up to the highest mountain.
She tryed to clim off but
she was straped in tight.
So she porked all the way
down the mountain whe she
got off, she was dizzy
and and she hollerd
That was
The last two are by the same author, and they were folded up inside each other. They both had numbers in the bottom corner of the page, as if they came from a numbered notebook. The one on top was numbered 69. It looks like it's actually a series of jokes about dinosaurs, presumably written by a dinosaur fan who is not afraid to create his own dinosaur names. Read it as a catalogue poem, which lists parts of speech in parallel structure. I call this one "How Does a Dinosaur?"
how
does the sign say at the entrance to a
dinosaur cave home sweet
stone.
"What"
did the Dinosaur say as he logged
home the groceries oh my aching
Brachio saurus
how
do you tell a dinosaur to hurry
Shackalege osaurus
how dose dinosaurs
Finally, by the same author, poem 65, a free verse didactic couplet, which I call "The Other Right Meat".
I
go to the pork and I know im right.
you need to come Donna
Moral:
When you don't know what word to write next, try "pork."
Copyright
2008 by Alyce Wilson
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