Found Poems

The topic of found poems came up on Jenners blog the other day. She used several definitions from the dictionary to write found poems. Kitten also wrote a found poem. She used one definition from the dictionary for hers.

I remember reading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones where she also talked about found poems. She told about giving a few pages of her journal to writing students and asked them to create poems using some of her phrases and words. Several students took the challenge. Each poem was different, but she was interested to see that they all included one phrase in common - "The hills of New Mexico are everywhere you go".

I decided to go back through my writing practice notebook, looking for phrases that I could use in a found poem. The phrases were scattered throughout the notebook and I combined them in a way I liked. Here's what I ended up with:

When were you going to tell me?
The days have lost their meaning and rhythm
Color variations, swirled patterns
Pass in front of my eyes
Warming and thinning my mood.
When were you going to tell me?

Here is another one from phrases taken from one page of my journal:

He smelled of
dry cleaned clothes and
aftershave and
his favorite brand of cigarette

A compilation of everything
that's gone before and
everything that's to come after