Here are some ideas for finding a focus for your poem:

–A “New York Times found poem” can be composed of words and phrases taken from one Times article, past or present, or several. You can mix and combine these words and phrases into a new piece, or you might simply “find” some Times writing that you feel is already poetic, as Alan Feuer does with “Missed Connections” posts on Craigslist.

–Your poem can be on any topic or theme you like. For instance, it could be about something as broad as politics, music or travel, or it might celebrate something as specific as Lady Gaga, Philadelphia or the iPad.

–Your poem might focus on something currently in the news, whether health care reform, the World Cup, bullying, the Large Hadron Collider or therecession — or you might use the Times archives or our On This Day in History feature to create a poem about an event in the past.

–You could also explore a trend you’ve read about in The Times, such as the local food movement or the effects of technology on contemporary life. Or you might simply collect words and phrases from different articles around a theme, like “identity,” “loss,” or “joy.”

March 4, 2009

Fisher Poets Celebrate an Industry in Decline

Work, sometimes just the memory of it, brings the fisher poets to Astoria, Ore., for a weekend each year.

The Times invites readers to submit original verse that addresses the current economic downturn, exploring the relationship of work to a way of life and a geographical place. We welcome sonnet or song, quick couplets or a haiku. (Audio and video links welcome.)  Submit a Song or Poem | Related Article

More, and an interactive feature with the fisher poets, here.

Sounds like a fascinating book- interesting “that the sorts of landscape pictures preferred by 8-year-olds around the world seem to mirror the types of flat, savannah-like vistas in which their distant ancestors may well have thrived.”

More of Anthony Gottlieb’s excellent NY Times review.  Also, briefly noted in The New Yorker.

As Gottlieb points out, Dutton spends some time on forgery and plagiarism (see earlier essay on the subject).  We’ll post more on his thoughts here- especially around found art.  In an essay on his website he writes:

“But by now it should be obvious that the strict demarcation between art and craft as I’ve begun to explain it exists only in the philosopher’s imagination.  In the first place, almost all traditionally acknowledged art involves, indeed, requires craft, requires the application of technique.  At least it has historically, and the training for practitioners in all of the arts has involved the mastery of techniques (though this differs among the arts: training as a musician requires a more rigourous and structured course of technical preparation than training as a novelist — writing good novels isn’t any easier than playing the piano well, but the training for it is less routinised).  Thus for the last 2500 years it might be said at least that craft of some sort has been considered a necessary condition for artistic practice — a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition.  And in this respect, one way to understand the appearance of Found Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art on the modern scene. All of these movements are in part attacks on the very place of craft in art — attempts to produce art without craft.  (For that very reason, among others, I believe these schools of art do not have a vital future ahead of them. )”

I wonder- is there not craft in Duchamp’s selection of an item, for instance, or in other forms of found art?  Not going indict Dutton on this point without reading his book, but seems he’s less than charitable on this subject.

Dutton on Brian Lehrer Show:

In honor of Mr May, we re-publish an occasional poegle from the Collection.

My First Telescope

I used a little eyepiece
And a pair of my father’s optical glasses,

A cereal box, a drainpipe,
Cedar roofing shingles, a record,
And a huge cardboard tube.

You could see a lot from a backyard
In Ohio, but I was living
In a mid-floor apartment
In Brooklyn. I made basic drawings

Of sunspots. I managed to observe
A few double stars
And the Great Nebula of Orion.
Stargazers, like musicians,
Typically learn
On inferior instruments.

Small wonder, then,
That it is the telescope
That has seen more changes
Than anything else
In my life.

-Editor (search phrase “my first telescope”)

“During a dress rehearsal, he wrote, a group of children spelled out the title of a song, ‘Christmas Love,’ with each child holding up a letter. One girl held the ‘m’ upside down, so that it appeared as a ‘w,’ and it looked as if the group was spelling ‘Christ Was Love.’ It was a heartwarming Christmas story from a writer known for his spiritual teachings.

“Except it never happened — to him.”

At Poegles.com, we’re fans of plagiarism- of the sort where scraps of text are repurposed in the body of a different work.  But stealing an entire narrative?  Boo!

“After eight years of mangled and manipulated language, and the palpable effects of that in the real world, it seems like any gesture toward clarity of expression and dignity of life is welcome,” Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine, said in an e-mail message.

More

At Poegles.com, when we read phrases like “anomalies in the sky tell you what to look for”, and ”the stakes for dark matter go beyond cosmology”, we get excited.  Even better are sentences like ”you could think of it as a hamster running around on a wheel in its cage. We cannot see the hamster or the cage, but we can sort of feel the impact of the hamster running.” 

We hope you’ll take some inspiration, too, and write a poegle that addresses this week’s contest theme- ‘lost in space’.  Who knows what you might turn up?  Maybe even some exotic dark matter.  Visit the contest here.

We here at Poegles.com have long been interested in how the collective suffering of humanity is recorded on the Internet in the various scraps of text that are left by those publishing to the web. Some of the poegles in our current collection attempt to illustrate collective experiences, such as Before the War and At the Scene of the Accident (below). Before the War paints a picture of how war changes society by aggregating a variety of phrases returned by searching for that phrase. At the Scene of the Accident takes an all too common moment in modern society- a car crash- and conflates the results in an eerie pantoum.

We wonder whether in future the predictive qualities of internet search technology will give us insight into things beyond epidemics. Could some algorithm be arrived at that could scour news, blog postings and other types of media for the kind of incendiary language that is the prelude to war? Could an analysis of search results predict other kinds of societal developments, like changes over time on a political issue? Poeglers, like poets across time, are at the fore of these questions, inspecting the raw results one by one, looking for truths in the sea of human experience returned by a simple search.

At the Scene of the Accident

Immediately stop the vehicle
Check to see is anyone is injured
Never admit fault
Always cooperate with law enforcement

Check to see if anyone is injured
Notify your insurance agent
Always cooperate with the law enforcement
The evidence proved Morris complained of pain

Notify your insurance agent
No final casualty figure was available
The evidence proved Morris complained of pain
Roscoe observed a vehicle overturned in a ditch

No final casualty figure was available
Even casual remarks may be used in court
Roscoe observed a vehicle overturned in a ditch
By this time Mike had already died

Even casual remarks may be used in court
Memories quickly fade
By this time Mike had already died
The cause of death was delayed resuscitation

Memories quickly fade
Never admit fault
The cause of death was delayed resuscitation
Immediately stop the vehicle

There were five other poems in the paper on the Op-Ed page.  Perhaps the New York Times was inspired by the Friday Poegle Contest?