Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry (a literary equivalent of a collage) by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. The resulting poem([1]) 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.
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Comparisons and predecessors
Marquive 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.
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.
Examples
An example of found poetry appeared in William Whewell's "An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics":
In 2003, Slate writer Hart Seely found poetry in the speeches and news briefings of Donald Rumsfeld. In a transcript of a Department of Defense news briefing from February 12, 2002, Rumsfeld ruminated on "The Unknown":
Hart Seely published Rumsfeld's poetry in the book, Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld (2003). American composer Phil Kline set Rumsfeld's lyrics to music in "Rumsfeld's Songs", a song cycle released on Zippo Songs (2004). Pianist Bryant Kong also used Rumsfeld's lyrics on his release "Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld".
In 2009, on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, the talkshow host twice asked actor William Shatner to deliver the written words of former Alaskan Governor and Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin in the style of beat poetry. Shatner performed Palin's farewell speech on July 27, and several of her tweets on July 29. Shatner was supported by a bongo player and double-bassist.
Another well known example of a public figure's speech being converted into found poetry was the baseball play calls of Phil Rizzuto. Rizzuto was the announcer for the New York Yankees baseball team for some 40 years, and some of his at times rambling or disjointed commentary was collected and reformatted by Hart Seely and Tom Peyer into a collection of Rizzuto's found poetry. An example is Rizzuto's thoughts on the death of Yankees catcher Thurmon Munson in an airplane crash:
The website Verbatim Poetry has been publishing found poems weekly since March 2009. It emphasizes the poetry found in ordinary places, and employs traditional poetic forms such as the Shakespearean sonnet as well as free verse.
The Internet's first formal literary journal devoted to found poetry, The Found Poetry Review, debuted in 2011. Since its inception, the quarterly journal has featured traditional centos and poems taken from textbooks, Marcel Duchamp paintings, Charles Manson's trial testimony, AOL search data, Emily Post's etiquette books, Wikipedia articles, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, Wonder Woman comics and more.
Comedian Dave Gorman frequently creates comical found poems using the idiotic things that people have said on online forums on his Dave series Modern Life is Goodish.