Category: Found Poems

The photo of my found poem would not upload for some reason. So I will just type it through here.

Summer nights                       forever wild

city lights                             like a child

I                     love

rock n’ roll

I                 got

electric soul

still                                   young

still                                          beautiful

grace                                 body

face                  party

no longer                      young and beautiful

I got nothing              but

my aching  soul

I know

I’m              no longer

young and beautiful

My inspiration came from the desire for creativity. The song lyrics I chose to create my found poem from was ‘Young and Beautiful’, by Lana Del Rey. With the poem I created, I wanted to create a personality of an old  woman who was once a rockstar, or had that of a rockstar personality. I wanted readers to see that in the beginning she talks in the moment of her young age and how she was wild and had the free-spirited personality. Toward the end, I showed her talking in her old age. The woman comments on being not young and beautiful anymore.

The goal for this poem is to show themes of time, identity, and life. All of which can have major effects on a human. I chose the words I did to show how she felt alive and free while young. Then during old age, I showed how she took on a more depressed tone due to her not feeling and looking as appealing as she used to.

 

 

My poem was inspired by an article recently on a Ferguson activist finding her son named Danye Jones murdered in the backyard of their home in St. Louis County in Missouri. I shockingly did not hear about this story on the news, I actually saw a tweet about the incident on Twitter. The tweet also revealed the horrific and devastating pictures of Jones that I’ve also decided to add in addition to my poem. The picture in the bottom right corner that I added is a picture of him hanging by a sheet around his neck on a tree with his pants down to his feet. Instead of having people who read my poem picture what he looked like at that moment, I thought why not actually show it.

As I began to figure out what words to use in my poem I found it very overwhelming. Even though my article was of fair enough length there were a bunch of words I would’ve liked to use but I could not use them all. I picked out the words that expressed the two point of views of what people believed happened to him and how others felt. I tried to be very creative while creating this poem because I want many people to be aware of most things that they do not inform us in the media. By placing his name several times scrabbled up I hope you would remember his name and not let what happened to him go unheard…

I chose to share this quote that was said by Colin Kaepernick for many reasons. I am one to support our troops always and I strongly believe there is not a reason to not do so. As they will always have our backs, I will choose to always have theirs.

Instead of crossing words out, I decided it was important to keep every word because everything had crucial meaning. I strongly believe that people of any race should have the freedom to say as they please. I am not an African American so I do not know how one does feel, but I am a woman. I understand there are things that we should stand up for that our country struggles with. That is why this part was not taken out because people’s feelings and thoughts about our country are crucial to making it better.

The words that are shown in blue and red, “I am going to show pride for country”, I wanted to emphasize for many reasons. One is that we have freedom because of our soldiers. The freedom to speak our minds is because of them and the freedom to not stand during the National Anthem is because of them as well. For that, I believe that we should ALWAYS show our respect to those who fought and sacrificed their lives for our freedom. I also did these words in color because they were ALL positive. Our country could always use some positivity. Lastly, the word “country” stands out, even more, seeing that it is capitalized but also red. I did this because, to me, this word has so much power. “Country” means people thriving and living together of all cultures, religions, and races. People should want to get along and fight FOR each other, NOT against. Therefore it needed to stand out.

I believe that people should always respect the ones who left their homes, families and sometimes left this Earth while protecting us. I don’t think standing for the National Anthem is asking too much. What is great about this country is that we have the right to say what we believe and we have the right to protest. I just do not believe that disrespecting our veterans by not standing during the National Anthem is the time or place to do so.

Sexual harassment           a formal complaint

       Not              worth it  

          no          back up.

Students take the hit           victims

 Victim             Least powerful        

                      having to adjust

     future      

“Trouble maker”          in a small office

When speak up              victims. 

Against powerful-           banded together

New process        “handling”

slow moving.            Unconvincing

    women         bullied out

Of careers   women

       victims.

For my found poem I aimed to create a hallowed outlined of work, where many of the details are left out. For my poem I tried to write in this style to make one specific situation fit the issues that many who undergo similar situations face. Sexual harassment is a widespread issue that women are affected by in all different ways. Although each individual woman has their own story, many of the basics are the same. That is what I was aiming to depict in this poem, the basic structure of these situations. Situation sot sexual harassment begin with the incident as well as the decision as to whether or not to report it or file a complaint. Women are forced to decide with the possibility that they will not receive backup and support. Without the support they become the victims, with reputations that bar them from future jobs and ruin their image at current jobs. These are common issues that are often found to be the base of many sexual harassment incidents.  In my poem, I eliminated the specific details of the one woman’s story in the article I read. Her specific issue sparked my anger towards the topic as a whole, inspiring me to write my poem as a more general outline of the issue of sexual harassment.

 

 

(Just in case the photo is too hard to read: “You just might pull you a man nobody wants and get them to respect you. What’s scary is he may forget your name.”)

My found poem is short but holds a lot of meaning to me. The original piece is a song by Kanye West that belittles women by telling them what they need to do in order for a man to like them, so I kept that in mind while transforming the lyrics into something else. Rather than think about what people should do to make a relationship work, I reflected on what not to do when hoping to change a person. The truth is that people cannot fully change other people, nor should they try to when getting into a relationship with them.

I created this poem as a look back to someone that at one point was very special to me. This person claimed that they were afraid of commitment, so they didn’t like the idea of having a relationship (hence being the man that nobody wants). He eventually made an exception to his ideology and proved to be quite the gentleman. This exception came to an end when he ultimately went back to his original ideology and ended things out of the blue, acting as though we never knew one another. He was never a bad guy, he just didn’t handle the situation correctly, creating hurt feelings. This relationship was a while ago, but I think back from time to time and wonder if he has pushed me from his memory, forgetting my name.

While creating this poem, I liked the idea of not cutting up anything or rearranging the order of the words. By keeping the words in the same order that Kanye said them in, it gives the feeling to me that it’s possible to find a second meaning to the original verses. I liked the idea of being able to literally black out the offensiveness that the song portrays in order to highlight something slightly melancholy.

 

The reason I chose “Jesus Of Suburbia” written by Green Day was simply because I wanted to pick the wordiest song I knew start to finish. I didn’t realize the song was so repetitive until I started playing around with it, which I now find to be perfectly representative of life in the suburbs. I broke the song up into sections to compare my life before and after leaving for college. The song’s original meaning is just one big build up where the protagonist realizes he hates everything about his home and his life, and at the end of the song he decides to run away. When finding new meaning to the song, I didn’t have to try. It’s new meaning from my point of view was evident, and I think that a lot of new college students could probably relate as well. Though I didn’t hate my life at home, and I didn’t really want to leave it, over time I realized this change was necessary for my personal growth. The constant monotony of my suburb was a deterrent to my life. While I think it was important for me to leave, I also think that growing up the way I did made a huge impression on my character. My found poem is composed less of the specific experiences of my transition and more of the feelings which came from those experiences. I think that creating my own found poem helped me understand M. NourbeSe Philip’s thought process while creating Zong!.

Continue reading “A Suburb’s Lasting Impression”

I created my found poem in memory of my youngest cousin who had passed away recently. I used the song lyrics “Who You’d Be Today” by Kenny Chesney because I can personally relate to them.

Before I started to create my found poem, I printed off the lyrics and began to read them carefully. I crossed out the words and lines that didn’t quite fit with how I felt and kept the words that I could relate to and could tell a story. Like in also every song, verses repeat; so I crossed out the repeating verses as well. Next, I began to cut out one to three words from the lines I wanted to keep. I wanted to create a cross to symbolize healing for my family, but when I arranged the words on paper it didn’t look right. I didn’t place the words in any random order because I believe that the original order of the lyrics demonstrate good meaning. Instead, I just placed the words on the page where I thought would be relevant. With that being said, you will notice that I separated “I still can’t believe you’re gone” and “It ain’t fair you died too young” farther apart than “like a story had just begun”. This is because I feel as if the reader should read those lines slower and let them sink in and get a sense of what my family and myself, as an author, have felt.

Lastly, as a reader, you will notice that I separated “who you’d be today” into single words because I felt like this was the most important part of the poem. As the author of this poem and as a cousin, I am questioning as to who would my cousin be if this tragedy didn’t happen so soon in his life. Again, with the spacing of these words, I believe it will slow the reader down when they are reading this and understand the purpose of the poem. As you will see below my found poem, I have placed my cousin’s name at the bottom of the page as I dedicated this found poem to him. I was inspired by M. NourbeSe Philip with her idea of dedicating pages to others as well.