Found poetry
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Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions. The resulting poem can be defined as either treated: changed in a profound and systematic manner; or untreated: virtually unchanged from the order, syntax and meaning of the original.
[edit] Comparisons and predecessors
Franze Stenzel describes the Dadaism movement with its readymade philosophy as a predecessor for the practice that later became found poetry. Dadaists like Duchamp placed everyday practical objects in an environment that was aesthetic and in so doing called into question, that object as art, the observer, the aesthetic environment and the definition of what is art.[1]
Stylistically, found poetry is similar to the visual art of "appropriation" in which two- and three-dimensional art is created from recycled items, giving ordinary/commercial things new meaning when put within a new context in unexpected combinations or juxtapositions.
[edit] Examples
An example of found poetry appeared in William Whewell's "An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics"[2]:
"Hence no force, however great,
can stretch a cord, however fine,
into a horizontal line
which is accurately straight."
though when it was pointed out to him, an unamused Whewell changed the wording in the next edition.[3]
In 2003, Slate found poetry in the speeches and news briefings of Donald Rumsfeld[4]
[edit] Notes
The episode Moe'N'a Lisa of the Simpsons could be given as an example of found poetry, due to the re-arrangement into a poem of various quotes of Moe's, as done by Lisa.
- ^ Stanzel, Franz K. "Texts Recycled: 'Found' Poems Found in Canada." Gaining Ground: European Critics on Canadian Literature. Eds. Robert Kroetsch and Reingard M. Nischik. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1985. 91-106.
- ^ Whewell, William. An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics, page 44. Cambridge (England), 1819.
- ^ Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry
- ^ The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld, Hart Seely, Slate Magazine, 2 April 2003
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