Found Poetry Collages by Mary Bast: Beneath Their Canopies

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Beneath Their Canopies

Mill Creek Preserve, oil painting by Mary Bast

Earth’s endless effort to speak to heaven,
unique in the smallest play of leaves,
complex curvings of branches,
nuances of green, foliage nodding
in instants of breeze or dappling sun,
blossoms too beautiful for words.

The tree seems still, a spot of shade,
birds’ home, nectar guide for pollinators,
warming love’s seeds beneath boughs.
Rain falls, wind sways, soil sustains,
nature subtly changing life’s essence.

Making no sound or sign
a forest can give the sky feeling.

OFF THE SHELF PoMoSco badge: "Head to your local library or bookstore, making a mental note of things you see on your journey. Choose one of those for research and find five books related to that topic. Compose a poem using only the words and phrases found on the first five pages of each text, excluding introductory matter."

On my way to the library to prepare for this badge, I rejoiced in the abundant greenery of Gainesville Florida's urban forest. In addition to naturally growing laurel and water oaks, many thousands of trees have been planted along our streets, including magnolias, winged elms, bluff oaks, live oaks, and Florida maples.

Sources:
The Power of Trees, Gretchen C. Daily & Charles J. Katz Jr, San Antonio, TX: Trinity UP, 2012.
Between Earth and Sky, Nalini M. Nadkarni, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
The Glory of the Tree, Noel Kingsbury, Buffalo, New York: Firefly Books, 2014.
The Secret Life of Trees, Hiara Chevallier, New York: DK Publishing, 1999.
Florida’s Fabulous Trees, Singapore: World Publications, 2000.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Former Editor at Bacopa Literary Review, I write poetry, found poetry, and memoir. When my hands aren't on computer keys they're creating art.

The Found Poetry Review's 2015 PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts) project especially intrigued me -- the chance to experiment with a variety of found poetry structures.

Those exercises also enhanced my under-standing of poetry and writing in general. For example, the "First in Line" badge required creating a poem from first lines in one poet's collection.

My resulting poem, "The Days Have Done With You" (from Nina Bogin's collection In the North) made me much more aware of the way a poem's first line can either set up what's going to happen or drop us right into action, much the same as the start of a good novel.

Some Forms of Found Poetry

Found poetry is created by taking words or phrases from other sources and changing spacing and lines, adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. Any poetic form can be used with found poetry.

There's also the cento—made up of lines from other poems. The sources may be poems of a single poet, or many poets, or even many different languages.

Erasure poems eliminate everything from a page or pages except the words that make up the poem. The "erasure" may be accomplished by white-out, correction tape (of various colors), lightening a photo and writing the poem's words over the original text, and many other variations.

Called blackout poems when covered with black tape (often refers to newspaper articles blacked out except for the words of the poem).

Ekphrasis usually refers to poetry inspired by visual art; I've extended the term to include art inspired by poetry.

Illustrated poetry describes poems and art side by side.

Haiga traditionally incorporated an ink-brush or watercolor painting, a haiku poem, and calligraphy. Modern poets stretch these boundaries, superimposing haiku on photos, for example.