Reviews for Mornings Like This: Found Poems

The average rating for Mornings Like This: Found Poems based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-03-29 00:00:00 John Smith For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of found poetry: A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet. -definition from poets.org So you open any book, or a newspaper article, and find language you think is interesting, and "cut out" all the language that isn't to you a poem, or you conversely take the words you like and make a poem out of them. My idea is that you don't typically choose something already beautifully written'that in a way would be too easy'but find nuggets of beauty in something surprising. As if "This is just to say" by William Carlos Williams were actually a note of apology on a refrigerator and shaped into a poem by Williams. I know a poet who created a book of found poems out of a boring biography of WWII general. I guess the basic idea is that much poetry works with constraints, and the constraint of the found poem is that it has to be from a single source. Annie Dillard is best known as an essayist (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), but she was also a poet, and this is one of her collections of poetry. Of found poems, she writes in the intro: "Happy poets who write found poetry go pawing through popular culture like sculptors on trash heaps. They hold and wave aloft usable artifacts and fragments: jingles and ad copy, menus and broadcasts ' all objet trouvés, the literary equivalents of Warhol's Campbell's soup cans and Duchamp's bicycle. By entering a found text as a poem, the poet doubles its context. The original meaning remains intact, but now it swings between two poles. The poet adds, or at any rate increases, the element of delight. This is an urban, youthful, ironic, cruising kind of poetry. It serves up whole texts, or interrupted fragments of texts." Not many of these are fantastic poems, any of them, but the idea is intriguing, yes? Dillard culls about 40 such happy accidents from sources as diverse as a The American Boys Handy Book (1882) and the letters of Van Gogh. My favorite one does sort of cheat in a way, in using the great language in these letters: I Am Trying to Get at Something Utterly Heart-Broken ' V. VAN GOGH, LETTERS, 1873-1890, ED. I. STONE, TRANS. JOHANNA VAN GOGH At the end of the road is a small cottage, And over all the blue sky. I am trying to get at something utterly heart-broken. The flying birds, the smoking chimneys, And that figure loitering below in the yard- If we do not learn from this, then from what shall we learn? The miners go home in the white snow at twilight These people are quite black. Their houses are small. The time for making dark studies is short. A patch of brown heath through which a white Path leads, and sky just delicately tinged, Yet somewhat passionately brushed. We who try our best to live, why do we not live more? II The branches of poplars and willows rigid like wire. It may be true that there is no God here, But there must be one not far off. A studio with a cradle, a baby's high chair. Those colors which have no name Are the real foundation of everything. What I want is more beautiful huts far away on the heath. If we are tired, isn't it then because We have already walked a long way? The cart with the white horse brings a wounded man home from the mines. Bistre and bitumen, well applied, Make the colouring ripe and mellow and generous. III A ploughed field with clods of violet earth; Over all a yellow sky with a yellow sun. So there is every moment something that moves one intensely. A bluish-grey line of trees with a few roofs. I simply could not restrain myself or keep My hands off it or allow myself to rest. A mother with her child, in the shadow Of a large tree against the dune. To say how many green-greys there are is impossible. I love so much, so very much, the effect Of yellow leaves against green trunks. This is not a thing that I have sought, But has come across my path and I have seized it.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-24 00:00:00 Larry Stitham I should know better. Even Annie Dillard cannot entice me to enjoy poetry, though her own rather than "found" poetry might have been more successful. I simply do not have the patience necessary to properly appreciate its emotive style.