Hybrid Experiment

•Write down a specific memory of your life.

•Try to write it in memoir form using a good amount of adjectives and vivid detail.•Find a piece of found text that you feel relates to an element of your memory – emotionally or physically.•The found text could loosely/abstractly relate to the memory or relate in an obvious manner.
•Write the piece of found text after your memoir sentence.•Your outcome could be funny or serious or a combo!!!!!!!!

Getting the Knack

Getting the Knack by Stephen Dunning and William Stafford is a collection of writing exercises of various types. I was lucky enough to find a PDF of the chapter on Found Poetry titled "Found & Headline Poems" ! The chapter starts stating that found poetry is pleasant to write because you don't have to start "from scratch". I found this interesting because I never really thought of it that way but that is probably one of the reasons why I love writing it!

The writing exercise for found poetry in this chapter is very loosely similar to the Dadaist poetry exercise we did in class but their version takes all the Dada "chance" out of it. They advise to choose 50 to 100 words from a found text that you "like" and copy them down in the order you found them. Their rule for the source text is that it can't already be an arranged poetic form such as a poem or song lyrics. The third step is to study the words that you found and remove anything that seems "dull", "unnecessary", "sounds bad", or is "offensive". (This is where it REALLY differs from the Dadaist poetry exercise). They advise to negate about half of your chosen words. After this you're supposed to cut out the words into strips and arrange them physically in an order OF YOUR LIKING. They also advised to title it when finished.

This exercise is like a PG version of a found poem in my opinion. It essentially is to make a found poem that doesn't read as a found poem by curating the words in a way that sounds well written and reminiscent of a poem. Although this sounded much less interesting and kind of boring compared to the Dadaist poem exercise due to the lack of chance, I thought I'd give it a try! It was actually pretty fun and allowed me to practice "curating" found text in a poem form.

Here's what I came up with:
(My source text was the book What Happened to Art Criticism? by James Elkins....a dry read)

Refusing Art

a found poem by Em Jensen

Lovely French idea

Thus ants exposed

presume premodern practitioner 

Refusing art

Upbeat philosopher critiqued disdain,

asked catalog claim

Glossy plywood bridge

ran currently

Practice crisis 

Sources I used:

Getting the Knack by Stephen Dunning and William Stafford

What Happened to Art Criticism? by James Elkins

PDF to the Getting the Knack experiment: 

https://secure.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Books/Sample/18488chap1.pdf

Flarf Poetry

I have recently learned about the Flarf Poetry Movement, which is a genre of poetry very similar to Found Poetry and some might consider it a sub-genre of Found Poetry. It is an avant-garde poetry movement from the early 21st century. The term "Flarf" was coined by poet, Gary Sullivan. Sullivan wrote some of the original Flarf poems in existence.

Flarf poetry relates heavily to the type of Found Poetry I want to utilize in my writing as it embraces the Internet for its content. It often heavily uses Google search results in order to create poetry. Flarf embraces the absurd and the occasional offensive. The verb form of "Flarf" means to showcase the inherent awfulness of some preexisting text. The Flarf movement also embraces community in a way as it relies on the interaction and revisal of other poets. This further shows the importance of appropriation within Flarf. 

Poets.org describes the adjective form of Flarf, "Flarfy" as meaning "wrong, awkward, stumbling, semi-coherent, fucked-up, un-P.C. To take unexpected turns; to be jarring. Doing what one is not supposed to do."

Flarf rejects the traditional standards of poetry through embracing a quality and tonality not typically considered appropriate in poetry. An approach to creating Flarf poetry is to bombard Google with peculiar search terms then sift through the results to create comical and occasionally disturbing poems. It began as an email list- another reason computer technology is heavily relevant to this movement. It fell silent in 2001 but soon after 9/11 occurred the movement picked up speed again. This shows the absurdity of this poetry as it may embrace talk of tragedy in the media for its content. 

I think that the type of Found Poetry I myself have been working in might be most similar to Flarf poetry. I utilize the internet and social media for my found text and my poems often have a cynical undertone that imply social critique of a type of "awfulness" in our digital culture as well as often having an identifiable sense of humor.

Sources I used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flarf_poetry

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-flarf-poetry

Newspaper Blackout

I have been doing some research on a book/movement called "Newspaper Blackout". The book, Newspaper Blackout, was released in 2010 and was written by Austin Kleon. The book contains a collection of poems made simply by taking a newspaper and a black permanent marker and blacking out the words not needed within a poem, constructing through deconstruction. The book then led to the creation of a popular website which publishes poems made in the same way by readers all over the world.

I am fascinated with how the book by Austin Kleon turned into a movement. By publishing poems made by many in this way, one can see how the changes of someones geographic location effects the diversity of the poetry through coming from different types of media/sources.

This is very obviously a type of found poetry by starting with a preexisting source and appropriating the content within it. This type of found poetry is also extremely accessible in both practice and concept. Anyone with access to a newspaper, which is seemingly everyone, can participate in making this type of poem. Furthermore, the concept of this type of found poetry is simple to comprehend. Its visual form clues in the reader on the obvious nature of how its made. The content, varying in emotion due to the varied articles of newspapers, is always fascinating and playful to read due to its form.

These poems are sometimes very comical/humorous and other times very serious, dark, and somber. In both cases, this type of work can be seen as a commentary on our paper based media as well as a commentary on the world around us and how it is illustrated through media. It also very heavily relates to the concepts and themes found in the Dadaist art and poetry movement. On the other hand, this type of work can also be seen as merely a playful and simple practice or experiment.

Sources I used:
http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/about-found-poetry/
http://austinkleon.com/newspaperblackout/
http://newspaperblackout.com/
http://newspaperblackout.com/about
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061732974/wwwaustinkleo-20/ref=nosim/