Poetry Workshop: Found Poetry
Poetry Workshop #3
Welcome to the third poetry workshop! In this series, you will be introduced to a myriad of poetic techniques and styles and discover how Tracy K. Smith in particular employs such tools into her own writing. Today, let’s dive into Smith’s various works of found poetry.
What is Found Poetry?
According to poets.org, a found poem is a poem that "takes existing texts and refashions them, reorders them, and presents them as poems." Most often, found poems are made up of text from newspaper articles, novels, street art/graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems. Think of a found poem as being a collage/assemblage of all sorts of different texts combined into one final piece of poetry. A true found poem consists only of outside texts/resources. The words making up the poem remain in the poem as they were originally found, with very few to no additions. The form of the poem, however (such as where to make enjambments), is left up to the poet.
The Three Types of Found Poetry:
1. Blackout Poetry: A form of found poetry in which the poet takes an existing work and uses a pen or marker to black out certain words or phrases to reinterpret the original text.
EXAMPLE:
Source: Writers.com
2. Erasure Poetry: Similar to blackout poetry, erasure poetry involves using whiteout to cover or otherwise obscure certain words/portions of the original text. In both forms (blackout poetry and erasure poetry), poets create a whole new text to celebrate or subvert the intention of the original work in some way. Erasure poetry (and blackout poetry, for that matter) may be used as a means of collaboration, creating a new text from an old one and thereby starting a dialogue between the two, or as a means of confrontation to challenge a pre-existing text.
EXAMPLE:
Source: A Little White Shadow by Mary Ruefle
3. Cut-up Poetry: Involves cutting words out of source materials and rearranging them to create new meaning.
Source: Crowleywebb
Examples by Tracy K. Smith:
1. "Declaration" from Wade in the Water (This is an erasure poem drawn from the text of the Declaration of Independence).
He has
sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people
He has plundered our—
ravaged our—
destroyed the lives of our—
taking away our—
abolishing our most valuable—
and altering fundamentally the Forms of our—
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for
Redress in the most humble terms:
Our repeated
Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration
and settlement here.
—taken Captive
on the high Seas
to bear—
2. "I Will Tell You The Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It" (Section 6) from Wade in the Water (This poem is Composed from the letters and statements of African-Americans enlisted in the Civil War and their family members. Smith worked to preserve the original spellings and punctuation in her poem).
Excellent Sir, My son went in the 54th regiment–
Sir, my husband, who is in Company K, 22nd Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops
(and now in the Macon Hospital at Portsmouth with a wound in his arm)
has not received any pay since last May and then only thirteen dollars–
Sir, We The Members of Company D, of the 55th Massachusetts volunteers
Call the attention of your Excellency to our case–
for instant look and see
that we never was freed yet
Run Right out of Slavery
In to Soldiery & we
hadent nothing atall &
our wifes & mother most all of them
is aperishing all about & we
all are perishing our self–
i am willing to bee a soldier and serve my time
faithful like a man but i think it is hard to bee
poot off in such dogesh manner as that–
Will you see that the colored men fighting now,
are fairly treated. You ought to do this,
and do it at once, Not let the thing run along
meet it quickly and manfully. We poor oppressed ones
appeal to you, and ask fair play–
So please if you can do any good for us do it
in the name of god–
Excuse my boldness but pleas–
your reply will settle the matter and will be appreciated,
by, a colored man who, is willing to sacrifice his son
in the cause of Freedom & Humanity–
I have nothing more to say
hoping that you will lend a listening ear
to an umble soldier
I will close–
Yours for Christs sake–
(I shall hav to send this with out a stamp
for I haint money enough to buy a stamp)
3. "Watershed" from Wade in the Water (This is a found poem drawn from two sources: a New York Times Magazine January 6, 2016 article by Nathaniel Rich entitled, "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare," and excerpts of the narratives of survivors of near-death experiences as catalogued on www.nderf.org).
200 cows more than 600 hilly acres
property would have been even larger
had J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed
did not want to sell
but needed money poor health
mysterious ailments
Not long after the sale cattle began to act
deranged
footage shot on a camcorder
grainy intercut with static
Images jump repeat sound accelerates
slows down
quality of a horror movie
the rippling shallow water the white ash
trees shedding their leaves
a large pipe
discharging green water
a skinny red cow
hair missing back humped
a dead black calf in snow its eye
a brilliant chemical blue
a calf’s bisected head
liver heart stomachs kidneys
gall bladder some dark some green
cows with stringy tails malformed hooves
lesions red receded eyes suffering slobbering
staggering like drunks
It don’t look like
anything I’ve been into before
I began rising through the ceiling of each floor in the hospital as though I were being pulled by some force outside my own volition. I continued rising until I passed through the roof itself and found myself in the sky. I began to move much more quickly past the mountain range near the hospital and over the city. I was swept away by some unknown force, and started to move at an enormous speed. Just moving like a thunderbolt through a darkness.
R’s taking on the case I found to be inconceivable
It just felt like the right thing to do
a great
opportunity to use my background for people who
really needed it
R: filed a federal suit
pulled permits
land deeds
a letter that mentioned
a substance at the landfill
PFOA
perfluorooctanoic acid
a soap-like agent used in
ScotchgardTM
TeflonTM
PFOA: was to be incinerated or
sent to chemical waste facilities
not to be flushed into water or sewers
DuPont:
pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds
into the Ohio River
dumped tons of PFOA sludge
into open unlined pits
PFOA:
increased the size of the liver in rats and rabbits
(results replicated in dogs)
caused birth defects in rats
caused cancerous testicular pancreatic and
liver tumors in lab animals
possible DNA damage from exposure
bound to plasma proteins in blood
was found circulating through each organ
high concentrations in the blood of factory workers
children of pregnant employees had eye defects
dust vented from factory chimneys settled well-beyond
the property line
entered the water table
concentration in drinking water 3x international safety limit
study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer
worth $1 billion in annual profit
(It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before)
Every individual thing glowed with life. Bands of energy were being dispersed from a huge universal heartbeat, faster than a raging river. I found I could move as fast as I could think.
DuPont:
did not make this information public
declined to disclose this finding
considered switching to new compound that appeared less toxic
and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time
decided against it
decided it needed to find a landfill for toxic sludge
bought 66 acres from a low-level employee
at the Washington Works facility
(J needed money
had been in poor health
a dead black calf
its eye chemical blue
cows slobbering
staggering like drunks)
I could perceive the Earth, outer space, and humanity from a spacious and indescribable ‘God’s eye view.’ I saw a planet to my left covered with vegetation of many colors no signs of mankind or any familiar shorelines. The waters were living waters, the grass was living, the trees and the animals were more alive than on earth.
D’s first husband had been a chemist
When you
worked at DuPont in this town you could have
everything you wanted
DuPont paid for his education
secured him a mortgage paid a generous salary
even gave him a free supply of PFOA
He explained that the planet we call Earth really has a proper name, has its own energy, is a true living being, was very strong but has been weakened considerably.
which she used
as soap in the family’s dishwasher
I could feel Earth’s desperate situation. Her aura appeared to be very strange, made me wonder if it was radioactivity. It was bleak, faded in color, and its sound was heart wrenching.
Sometimes
her husband came home sick—fever, nausea, diarrhea,
vomiting—‘Teflon flu’
an emergency hysterectomy
a second surgery
I could tell the Doctor everything he did upon my arrival down to the minute details of accompanying the nurse to the basement of the hospital to get the plasma for me; everything he did while also being instructed and shown around in Heaven.
Clients called R to say they had received diagnoses of cancer
or that a family member had died
W who had cancer had died of a heart attack
Two years later W’s wife died of cancer
They knew this stuff was harmful
and they put it in the water anyway
I suspect that Earth may be a place of education.
PFOA detected in:
American blood banks
blood or vital organs of:
Atlantic salmon
swordfish
striped mullet
common cormorants
Alaskan polar bears
brown pelicans
sea turtles
sea eagles
California sea lions
Laysan albatrosses on a wildlife refuge
in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean
Viewing the myriad human faces with an indescribable, intimate, and profound love. This love was all around me, it was everywhere, but at the same time it was also me.
We see a situation
that has gone
from Washington Works
All that was important in life was the love we felt.
to statewide
All that was made, said, done, or even thought without love was undone.
to everywhere
it’s global
In my particular case, God took the form of a luminous warm water. It does not mean that a luminous warm water is God. It is just that, for me, it was experiencing the luminous warm water that I felt the most connection with the eternal.
to recount his achievements –
those things done not done
in order to serve a simple end.
that it should have taken so short a time
for the whole nation to see
the true measure of a man's life.
to remind you:
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