FOUND POETRY

Have you ever noticed something strange while reading the text? Some kind of notion that this particular part of the text is special, different from the others, bears some sort of uncanny poetic quality... Of course, you did. It happens sometimes. If you take out that piece of text and put it out of its original context - you get something that is called "found poetry".

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Found poetry is one of the glorious achievements of our uptight times. It can be everything and nothing in particular. You can make it out of anything and yet not every piece of text can become such. While there are numerous examples pre-dating XX century - the concept of found poetry bloomed considerably over the course of XX century - mostly thanks to critical appreciation of the phenomenon. Found poetry is an epitome of relativity of any concept and solid example of a fact that nothing can be finitely defined as this or that, especially if it is work of art.

Part of the charm of found poetry lies in a thick mist of mystery surrounding the concept of poetry itself. Vague definition "form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to or in place of the prosaic ostensible meaning" can be applied to approximately anything but it serves as a safe middle ground for a discussion. Even though it is utterly implausible upon closer look. To put is simpler - you can't tell for sure what exactly is poetry and what is not. You just know that this particular text is and that particular text is not. Just like film noir. And that is what makes found poetry so special. Because it requires completely different set of skills. But first, lets get things straight.  

What is found poetry?

Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking certain words, phrases or entire sentences from the text and re-framing them as a separate piece with a direct link to the source material. Changes can be made to the found poem - most commonly change of spacing, line breaks, adding or deleting certain parts. Consider this to be the form of literary collage.
Here's an example poem by Langston Hughes:

Johannesburg Mines

In the Johannesburg mines

There are 240,000

Native Africans working.

What kind of poem

Would you

Make out of that?

240,000 natives

Working in the

Johannesburg mines.

As you can see - this poem uses actual fact and reinforces it with the power of creative line breaks and rhetoric questions.

It is possible to single out three types of found poetry.

Pure found poetry that consists solely from the other texts. It is the easiest and in the same time the hardest thing to do. More on that later. It is funny but the most famous example of pure found poetry is not made by a poet but a politician - former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his Known Unknown speech. Here it is:

The Unknown

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones we don't know

We don't know.

-Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Second type is so-called mixed found poetry that incorporates parts of texts of different origin in order to create wholly new meanings and narratives. One of the most famous example of mixed found poetry is T.S. Eliot' seminal poem "The Waste Land", that incorporates dozens and dozens of different texts into solid aesthetic whole. Take a look at the concluding part. It consists of many things. Amongst other things - you get a part of a nursery rhyme "London Bridge is falling down", then a bit from Dante's Purgatorio, then few cuts from some ancient Greek poems and finally words in Sanskrit. Together they forge something completely different but they never stray away from their origins. Here it is:

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon- O swallow swallow

Le Prince d'Aquitaine'  la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you.  Hieronymo's mad againe.

Dadda.  Dayadhvam.  Damyata.

Shantih      shantih     shantih

Third type is so-called faux found poetry - which is not really found in any way but imitated to look like one. It is rarely considered to be legit found poetry but I'm adding it anyway because of its aesthetic purpose. Not every poem should be written with an elaborate use of vocabulary and uncanny mastery of rhetoric tricks. Sometimes it just needs to be point out the something you don't pay attention for from a different point of view. The greatest example is of course William Carlos Williams' poem This is Just to Say:

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Where to find poetry?

Anywhere, basically. You just need to take some text - no matter what. Then read it through randomly without diving deep. Take out bits and pieces. And here you are - you have found the poem.
Whether or not it is any good - that another thing. You get the skill through practice - by trying more and more.