From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Found poetry is the rearrangement of words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages that are taken from other sources and reframed as poetry by changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions. The resulting poem can be defined as "treated" (changed in a profound and systematic manner) or "untreated" (conserving virtually the same order, syntax and meaning as in the original).

The first major example of the extended use of found poetry is Isidore Ducasse's Poesies.

The creation of found poetry requires the poet to draw upon not only mental creativity but his or her own unconscious attitude regarding the nature of language. Structurally, it can sometimes be similar to the process of composing a visual collage. Stylistically, it 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. Appropriation art often plays upon a double-edged meaning, wherein the object's new artistic meaning makes a political or philosophical comment on its original purpose, and the same can be said for the way 'found poetry' can contain clever wordplay or evoke ironic contradictions in the way we use language.

An example of found poetry appeared in William Whewell’s "Elementary Treatise on Mechanics":

"And hence no force, however great,

can stretch a cord, however fine,

into a horizontal line

that shall be absolutely straight.”

though when it was pointed out to him, an unamused Whewell changed the wording in the next edition. ^[1], ^[2] Ironically, this quatrain remains much better known than any of Whewell's intentional poetry.

In the web era, taking words from spam e-mail (and recently 419 scam e-mail) and turning it into poetry has a long history, dating back to the late 1990s. SatireWire's contest [1] which ran in 2000 and 2001 is one of the most well-known examples.

In 2003, the press and various online communities decided they had found poetry in the speeches and news briefings of Donald Rumsfeld; this example, The Unknown being the most often cited:

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.

Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing (later collected by Hart Seely in Pieces of Intelligence: The Existential Poetry of Donald H. Rumsfeld (ISBN 0743255976))

The book O Holy Cow!: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto, edited by Tom Peyer and Hart Seely, is made entirely of found poetry taken word for word from broadcasts of Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto. Examples include:

• Chaos

This is very interesting.

Forget the game.

Right here.

Here's a guy can't see.

All right,

Gene Larkin is the NO!

Gene Larkin?

What did he do?

Base on balls.

• Forever Young

Bobby Thigpen out there.

Number thirty-seven.

That's the guy in the Peanuts cartoon.

Pigpen.

That's a joke.

That guy in Peanuts with Charlie Brown.

He's always dirty.

Oh yeah.

Every day.

Orphan Annie.

You know,

She hasn't aged in thirty-two years.

1. ^ Science Ficetion & Fantasy Poetry
2. ^ Brainyquote: William Whewell