Wrong Way — Right Way
Air
An InvitationA Paycheck
HellSinners All The World What Death Is
Rejecting IgnoringA Stopped Watch All-Seeing
“Be Ye Ready”Heaven No Savior Substitute An Anchor
My Glasses Dark Glasses
A Grade Book A Love Letter Mosquito Bites The Shadow
How To Eat Necessary Parts
Safe Keeping CleanA Bad Light Bulb
A Good Light Bulb
A Broken Fingernail
HairWindows All Dressed Up
Not Yours
All To Him My Heart An OnionTearing Down or Building Up
Light BulbsMind Your Mind When Your Dog Wags Its Tail at You
Wrong Label
You Can’t Change History
A found poem is a collection of words written by somebody else, “re-purposed” as poetry and presented with the conventions of a literary art object. Most found poems are hijacked bits of pop culture, kept intact but recontextualized for effect: Think William Shatner on the Conan show, smirking his way through a recitation of a Sarah Palin speech, to the accompaniment of a bass and bongo. But another type of found poem is more of a collage, which gives the “finder” considerably more room for editorial judgment. I first met them in Annie Dillard’s collection Mornings Like This, where she extracts poems from field guides, scout manuals, indices, and other unlikely sources.
My source for this poem was the table of contents from Charles C. Ryrie’s Object Lessons: 100 Lessons from Everyday Life.
