On Ethical ELA’s VerseLove today, Amy Vetter invites teacher-writers to compose found poems: “A found poem is like a collage…find a text (e.g. a novel) or series of texts (e.g., novel, poem, article) and pull out words, phrases, sentences that stick out to you. Play around with the words. Rearrange them until a thought or theme jumps out at you. Continue until you’ve created a cohesive text.”
My found poem comes from Natalie Babbitt’s The Search for Delicious, Amanda Gorman’s poem “Arborescent I” from Call Us What We Carry, and A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age, Daniel J. Levitin.
Stories We Tell Ourselves
I read a story
about people who
built towns
crowned a king
and enjoyed
a great many
quarrels and troubles
all of which
they created quite
by themselves
for our brains are built
to make stories as
they take in the vastness
of the world
we forget
looking at a city
through the window
of a train
that we’re only seeing
the part
with the train tracks
running through it
not the whole
blow the whistle
open the door
but it is shut
and locked
the brain
makes up its mind
-it is a very powerful
self-justifying machine
and so
for selective windowing
we would again
give up our world
lit bits and pieces 