Saturday, February 4, 2012

Poem: On the Creation of Found Poetry

On the Creation of Found Poetry
  In a dismal pile are found
stray words from many sources

thrown in a blender, tortured with forks
and aged six years in wooden casks

then inscribed by persian slave
calligraphers upon the floor

(c)  Nissa Annakindt

Another day, another sijo--- this one from my book 'Opium Cactus'. The topic is a totally different form of poetry--- found poetry. In the simplest form of found poetry you simply take someone else's prose words and arrange them like a poem. There was one alleged poet who came out with a whole book of 'found poems' from the words of a government spokesman he didn't care for. This type of found poetry raises for me an issue--- is it really my poem if Bill Clinton composed the words and I just arranged them to spite him?

But there is also found poetry where the poet has the work of not only finding the words/phrases but putting them together from different sources, working with them to express the poet's vision. I find this kind of found poetry very satisfying. I also use the method of finding the words/phrases as if for a found poem, but using about an equal amount of words of my own to create the final effect.

As to why I used one poem form--- the sijo--- to describe another--- the found poem--- I'm just weird that way.

Poetic prompt: write a poem about a poetic form that you like--- or one that you hate.

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