Found Poems: More Work Than Just Finding

When I mentioned found poems as a form I would like to write about in this column, Kelly Fineman (with whom I’ll be alternating months) was happy to let me have the topic, because she had copyright concerns with found poems.

And maybe I shouldn’t call these found poems, because apparently my definition of found poems is different from the standard one.

The Poetry Dictionary, by John Drury, defines a found poem as “Text discovered in some nonpoetic setting (an advertisement, for example), removed from its context and presented as a poem.”

Yikes! I’d have copyright concerns about that, too! But I think of found poems in an entirely different way, based on writing exercises I remember doing in elementary school and junior high. So, let’s dive in and see if we can avoid getting handcuffs slapped on us for plagiarism.

Here’s my definition of a found poem: Individual words drawn from a larger text, rearranged to create an entirely new work.

Read this entire column here in a .pdf file.