tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post4813440254524982048..comments2024-03-28T12:59:41.910-04:00Comments on NeverEnding Story: Poetic Musings: "Found Tanka" by Margaret AtwoodChen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐http://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post-80910896620679522432014-07-28T14:38:39.545-04:002014-07-28T14:38:39.545-04:00Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking...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 lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. 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. The concept of found poetry is closely connected to the revision of the concept of authorship in the 20th century.<br /><br />-- excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, Found poetry, which can be accessed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_poetry<br /><br /><br />Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Examples of found poems can be seen in the work of Blaise Cendrars, David Antin, and Charles Reznikoff. In his book Testimony, Reznikoff created poetry from law reports, such as this excerpt:<br /><br />Amelia was just fourteen and out of the orphan asylum; at her<br /><br /> first job--in the bindery, and yes sir, yes ma’am, oh, so<br /><br /> anxious to please.<br /><br />She stood at the table, her blond hair hanging about her<br /><br /> shoulders, “knocking up” for Mary and Sadie, the stichers<br /><br />(“knocking up” is counting books and stacking them in piles to<br /><br /> be taken away).<br /><br />Many poets have also chosen to incorporate snippets of found texts into larger poems, most significantly Ezra Pound. His Cantos includes letters written by presidents and popes, as well as an array of official documents from governments and banks. The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot, uses many different texts, including Wagnerian opera, Shakespearian theater, and Greek mythology. Other poets who combined found elements with their poetry are William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and Louis Zukofsky.<br /><br />The found poem achieved prominence in the twentieth-century, sharing many traits with Pop Art, such as Andy Warhol’s soup cans or Marcel Duchamp’s bicycle wheels and urinals. The writer Annie Dillard has said that turning a text into a poem doubles that poem’s context. “The original meaning remains intact," she writes, “but now it swings between two poles.” <br /><br />-- "Poetic Form: Found Poem," Poets.org, which can be accessed at http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-found-poem<br />Chen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐https://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.com