Found Poetry Collages by Mary Bast: NCIS

Monday, April 20, 2015

Do We Understand Each Other?

Positive thoughts!
Positive thoughts!
We’re tighter than blood.
Sweetie pie, tootsie, call me.
We’ve said it all before.
I want to hear it again.
I love you.
I was out of line, I was bitching, I’m sorry.
That’ll be the day.
What did you say?
What did you say?
That I understand.
You appear to be looking for something.
I like women with fire.
Talk about déjà vu.
What are you doing?
Waiting.
Me, too.
You sound feminine.
I need a positive boy. I’m not implying you don’t care.
The way you’re acting, I don’t know.
I’m just tired.
Here are all my numbers and my cell.
It was good to meet you.
Now shake hands; now a little hug.
Now a deep tongue kiss, now I feel better.
Liaison, from the French word liaise meaning to bind.
Convince me.

To earn PoMoSco's QUIET ON SET badge, we were to choose a TV program, podcast, or movie of at least 30 minutes in length and transcribe what we heard — no pressing pause, turning on subtitles or referencing a script allowed! When creating a poem we could delete — but not reorder — the transcribed text. Mine is from NCIS, Season 3, “Hiatus – Part I”

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.