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A Tragedy By: Michael Wentling-Raymie

              For my found poem I used one page from an article describing the Eric Gardner killing by officer Pantaleo. On this page I only used half of it cutting off the other half to make it a smaller surface to bring more emphasis on the area I was working on. At first I wanted to cut the words out and have the words with a little white surrounding them on a black page, but then I decided that it would have more meaning and make the words “pop” more if I just used black marker to black out the words I didn’t want to use. This gave it more meaning showing that there is more white on the page then there is black. The words I chose to keep were the words that you usually see in every article describing a killing of an unarmed black man such as, “a tragedy” and “was doing his job.” It seems like every time  someone is killed these are the same words that are just repeated in every article and news cycle. These words just make me feel like the same thing just keeps repeating itself and has no end, a sense of it never changing.

              I learned from the experience that found poems, even with only a few words, can have large impacts and several interpretations. When creating these you would think it would take a only a couple minutes to construct but in order to create a good one you have to take your time and think about the meaning and the power each word on the page carries. The background as well as the arrangement of words gives each found poem new meaning.

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“Baby, It’s Cold Outside”… but not rapey Jessica Schaechinger

Original Lyrics:

I really can’t stay (but baby, it’s cold outside) I’ve got to go away (but baby, it’s cold outside)

This evening has been (been hoping that you’d drop in)

So very nice (i’ll hold your hands, they’re just like ice)

My mother will start to worry (beautiful what’s your hurry?)

My father will be pacing the floor (listen to the fireplace roar)

So really I’d better scurry (beautiful please don’t hurry)

But maybe just a half a drink more (put some records on while I pour)

The neighbors might think (baby, it’s bad out there)

Say what’s in this drink? (no cabs to be had out there)

I wish I knew how (your eyes are like starlight now)

To break this spell (i’ll take your hat, your hair looks swell)

I ought to say, no, no, no sir (mind if I move in closer?)

At least I’m gonna say that I tried (what’s the sense in hurtin’ my pride?)

I really can’t stay (oh baby don’t hold out)

But baby, it’s cold outside

I simply must go (but baby, it’s cold outside)

The answer is no (but baby, it’s cold outside)

Your welcome has been(how lucky that you dropped in)

So nice and warm (look out the window at this dawn)

My sister will be suspicious (gosh your lips look delicious)

My brother will be there at the door (waves upon the tropical shore)

My maiden aunts mind is vicious (gosh your lips are delicious)

But maybe just a cigarette more (never such a blizzard before)

I’ve gotta get home(but baby, you’d freeze out there)

Say lend me a coat(it’s up to your knees out there)

You’ve really been grand (i thrill when you touch my hand)

But don’t you see? (how can you do this thing to me?)

There’s bound to be talk tomorrow (think of my lifelong sorrow)

At least there will be plenty implied (if you got pnuemonia and died)

I really can’t stay (get over that old out)

Baby, it’s cold

Baby, it’s cold outside

Found Poem:

I really can’t stay, I’ve got to go away. 

This evening has been, so very nice.                                                     Beautiful, you hurry home

My father will be pacing the floor, so really I’d better scurry

 Beautiful please do hurry

But maybe just a half a drink more

Beautiful, you hurry home, it’s bad out there

But baby, it’s cold out there

   You simply must go, I’ll get you a cab.  You’d freeze out there, I’ll lend you a coat

You’ve really been grand, I’ll see you and talk tomorrow

Artist’s Statement:

For my found poem, I used the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. This song has always made me feel uncomfortable, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized it was a song about sexual assault. Just for a brief understanding, this song is about a girl, who seems to be young, mentioning her parents; with a man. As she tells him she must get home, he tries to convince her to stay by stating that it is cold outside, offering her more to drink, possibly drugging the drink, and kissing her. I cut a lot from this song, mainly the male’s parts, to try and make this song about a girl who must go home, and a man agreeing, and helping her out. I rearranged some of the words in order to form completely new lines for the man to show that he is trying to get the girl home. For the women’s perspective, seeing how in the original song she was drunk and he was convincing her to stay, I decided to have the women complain about the cold, but show the man doing the responsible and respectful thing by calling her a cab to get her home. The spacing I used was to differentiate the speaker, alternating between the male and female. I thought that it was very important to keep two speakers in this poem because it shows diversity in the language and still keeps a storytelling base. As I was working on the poem, all I was thinking is how creepy the original artist was, and just how I could change this to make it more of a lesson, showing what the right thing to do in that situation would be. I learned from this that when taking words in context, if you don’t like what it says, then change the context

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Mending the past

While making this found poem, I wanted to explore the topic of not being able to let go of the past. I felt that this was a really strong topic to cover for my poem, since people have all different kinds of views and standpoints on how they deal with grief and sadness.

Some people chose to accept that something has gone wrong and will move on with their lives within a blink of an eye, some it takes more time than others, but eventually they do find their way to cope with grief in a short-medium amount of time, while others can’t seem to move on for a long lasting time. 

This is a difficult process for many of them to deal with. They can’t process this grief and it stays with them. 

So, I chose a poem entitled, “Changing the Past”, by a girl who goes by the name of Donna from the website familyfriendspoems.com under the section life lesson poems. Donna writes this poem about her brother who was going through a difficult time. Her brother was dealing with a lot of grief and sadness, however she believed that his grief could be ‘fixed’, since other people have it worse than him.

I felt that I needed to write about this poem since dealing with grief is a very touchy subject, and writing a poem to try and show someone that they don’t have it ‘as bad as someone else’ in the long run isn’t going to help the other person heal. 

Donna had an overall very strong poem and it seemed like her message could resonate with her brother and many others who suffer from depression, however, her message throughout her poem was to basically ‘get over it, because someone has it worse than you’, so I cut and paste words from the poem and I reshaped in a way where the typical phrases about not being able to change the past were in the middle, and the shorter more meaningful sentences were cut out and centered or pasted to the side to show that there is hope for the poet’s brother and other out there. I wanted to reshape what she did in a way to show these people suffering that they weren’t alone and if they took more ‘out of the lines’ ideas, and one day at a time, it could get easier—however not fixable, which is why the stanza is not together. 

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Justification By: Emeilya Erway

I created my found poem on an article that had different quotes that people used to justify rape based on womens clothing. In this poem I wanted to focus on the fact that people feel that they can justify the action of rape just because a woman left her house in a tight dress or just wanted to feel beautiful. The fact that many people feel this way and still think like this makes angry, no woman should ever feel like it is her fault that she was raped. These are all words that people used when talking about sexual harassment and how it has to do with what a woman wears. I started off by going through the quotes and picking out all the words that made me angry, or that I did not agree with. Then I cut all those words out and placed them in different orders to try and see which order I liked best. I also left a lot of space to show all of the information that the speaker is missing while making such strong statements. The article I found also included their apologies but I decided not to include them because I felt they were all genetic, they said the same thing and that even though they apologized that doesn’t mean that what they said was right or can be justified. I decided to have the last line be “she’s asking for it” because this is a common statement that you hear now a days and people feel it is okay to say that and that it somehow is a magical statement that erases everything else. I felt this was a good way to end it and use it as a way to leave the reader with something to think about. 

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Genocide. Found poem by Chris Russo

When putting together this poem based on a New York Times article about the U.S. recognizing the Armenian genocide in 1915 by the Ottoman empire, I couldn’t help to think about how long this resolution took and the amount of criticism and disrespect to the civilians who died at the hands of an empire ruling over them. While writing this poem, I specifically choose the words I did to convey the amount of time that had passed before being recognized as a genocide and as well as Turkey’s denial of the tragic event as a genocide as a whole. Turkey’s hateful pushback, and not being able to own up to a tragic event of killing innocent people bothered me, so writing this poem portrays the feeling of the word “genocide” based on the article and actions taken upon Turkey and the United states.

While putting together the poem, I realized the inhumanity that leaders and people in the world have with similar events such as this and how the U.S. as well essentially really passed the bill to recognize it as genocide, in order to prevent Turkey’s continued attacks against the Kurds. Between both sides, using mass genocide as a political ploy and the pushback by Turkey to not recognize the genocide proves to show the ignorance of people when discussing a devastation to a number of Armenians over a century ago. Replacing words the way I did in my poem also made me think about how Zong! was constructed and written, expressing such an act or event in a different style and fashion to the reader where we can interpret different feelings from where we place our words and what words or sentences we construct. I felt genuinely upset and mad for the fact that the Armenians didn’t have a choice against the Ottoman empire, but someone like me does, in this time and in this country? It makes you appreciate the life and choices we may have over others, even if we have our own issues here too.

Works Cited

Edmondson Catie, Gladstone Rick. House Passes Resolution Recognizing... New York Times. 29 October, 2019.

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Prejudice. Found Poem by Christopher Feustel

While making this found poem, I wanted to explore the chains that racism and segregation and prejudice create on people. So I decided to explore En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” because it had a main idea of being open to everyone and their ideas. Ironically, I used this song to show prejudice and what comes with racism. I decided to cut out most of the positive words in the beginning of the song, because I wanted the reader to go through a transformation while reading. The transformation I had in mind was to show the reader what would happen if we weren’t so caught up in our ways, and if we were colorblind. The beginning goes over the hatred of other races and the societal norms of that hatred. The middle is the turning point, where there is a resistance to change, but it’s also welcomed, and then finally towards the end, there is the full change to being colorblind and to beings accepting. And also in a way, it’s freeing your mind. 
While I was creating this found poem, I had to bring up uncomfortable thoughts of racism, which helped me to find what I wanted to talk about in the beginning of the poem, and as I entered my thought process in today’s times, I was able to easily conclude the poem with a freeing tone. While making myself think of racism, I made myself upset. I wondered why anyone would think it would be okay to discriminate against someone else just based on the color of their skin or their background. They have done nothing inherently wrong and it made me upset to think about the way these people are treated. This ultimately became a learning experience for me as well. I can now understand why Zong! Is written the way it is. It invokes a certain type of feeling to not only the reader, but to the writer as well. I can finally understand how she felt while making this and it hurts to see how much pain this topic had brought her. However, that is exactly what she wanted us to feel, and that is exactly what I went for in writing my found poem.



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Who? by Melissa O’Leary

I created my found poem from a transcript of Donald Trump’s speech about building a wall at the southern border, between the U.S. and Mexico. While I was creating this found poem, I knew that I wanted to focus on what was happening to the people, instead of the actual physical creation of a border wall. I immediately cut out all parts of the speech that had to do with the construction of the border wall and its cost. Then, I took all of the instances where Trump referred to people, both illegal immigrants and american citizens, and collected them all together. Since I was trying to focus on people, trying to emphasize the fact that we are all people, I started the poem with the word “who.” I wanted to ask a question. I tried to imply, who are we? I then put a list of different words used to describe people, trying to group them all together. But in the section after that, I asked “who” again. This time, I separated words and phrases where illegal immigrants were referred to and where Americans and America was referred to. This was intended to show the separation that is already there, without the border wall. We are all people, but we are separate. 

In the second section of my found poem, I took phrases and paragraphs and blacked out certain parts of them. Again, I was trying to focus on the similarity, on the fact that we are all people. I cut out any references to who was being referred to in these sections. The “266,000 arrests” or the “killing, beheading, and dismembering” are all events that have happened, but we do not know to who. Did it happen to the immigrants? Or to the citizens? Is it more justifiable if it happened to immigrants? Is it worse if it happens to citizens? Again, I ask “Who”. After that, I ended the poem with the phrase that ends all presidential speeches: “Thank you and good night.” This felt like a powerful closing. It was powerful enough for the president to use, than it was powerful enough for me to close the poem with. Thank you and good night. 

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Animal Behavior. Found Poem: Isabelle Pastore

Shortened version of Maroon 5- “Animals”

“Baby I’m preying on you tonight

Hunt you down eat you alive

Just like animals

Animals

Like animals-mals

Maybe you think that you can hide

I can smell your scent for miles

Just like animals

Animals

Like animals-mals

Baby I’m

Yeah you can start over you can run free

You can find other fish in the sea

You can pretend it’s meant to be

But you can’t stay away from me

I can still hear you making that sound

Taking me down rolling on the ground

You can pretend that it was me

But no, oh

But you can’t stay away from me

I can still hear you making that sound

Taking me down rolling on the ground

You can pretend that it was me

But no, oh

Yo,

Whoa

Don’t tell no lie, lie lie lie

You can’t deny, ny ny ny

The beast inside, side side side

Yeah yeah yeah

No girl don’t lie, lie lie lie (No girl don’t lie)

You can’t deny, ny ny ny (You can’t deny)

The beast inside, side side side

Yeah yeah yeah”

(End of shortened Maroon 5 song, “Animals”)

My Found Poem:

I’m preying on you tonight

Hunt you down. Just like animals 

animals-mals.

You think that you can hide?

I can smell your scent

for miles. 

You can run free, but you cant stay away from me.

You cant deny the beast inside.

No.

Oh,

Just like animals

Animals animals-mals. 

(End of original found poem)


My Artist’s Statement: Found Poem

Isabelle Pastore

I chose to create my found poem using a song by Maroon 5 that is about 5-6 years old. The song is called “Animals”. I remember when this song came out and I would listen to it all the time because I loved Maroon 5. The meaning behind the song is mostly inappropriate, so I’m not sure why I was listening to it 6 years ago. Recently, I heard the song again and I interpreted the lyrics differently than I did when I was younger. Instead of hearing a fun and meaningless song like I used to, I heard a song that was very disrespectful towards women. The lyrics imply that women are similar to objects or prey that can be hunted, caught, and/or shown off like a trophy. 

In the lines of “Animals”, the singer professes that the woman can’t hide because he can smell her scent for miles. Instead of aimlessly listening, I began to analyze the lyrics of the song. 

Obviously, this is some sort of game to the speaker and he claims he will find this woman no matter where she goes. She is a challenge, she is a game, and she is his trophy. As a listener, I am unsure if the woman enjoys this behavior or if she’s just being stalked. The lyrics not only objectify women, but they also imply that men are dominant and women are to be “found” or “captured”, and essentially just treated like animals; hence the song’s title. 

To physically create my found poem, I chose the most descriptive and important words from the song’s lyrics. I picked the words that I thought represented extreme masculinity and objectification. For example, I chose to include the word, “beast”. Nothing shows hypermasculinity more than a man calling himself a beast. The speaker is telling the woman that she cannot stay away from him, proving that he will not give up until he finds her. He constantly compares her to an animal and declares his supposed dominance over her. Again, we are unsure of her involvement in this clearly toxic relationship. While I worked on my poem, I felt relieved that I was able to analyze and understand the meaning behind this song. My thoughts may not be correct, but that’s why they are thoughts. We are meant to wonder, imagine, and learn from our mistakes. I took a song from my past and let myself interpret it the way I would now. During this activity, I learned that I enjoy doing things like this. I enjoy picking apart literature and sharing my own ideas. This will help me see literature, language, and “Zong!” in a clearer way because I will take the time to understand what I’m reading. I can now find more interest in learning more about this creative, philosophical, and intriguing writing that I enjoy so much. I hope that I can do more activities like this in the future.

Works Cited.

https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107859489233/

(2014) “Animals” by Maroon 5

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Hurt, by Kaylee Oliver

For my found poem, I used an article describing the correlation between animal abuse and domestic violence to create something that depicts the severity and closeness of the two. I put the numbers at the beginning and again in the fourth line to show the magnitude of the issue, and provide numbers for readers. The quantities are not directly associated with the subjects they represent, a choice made to express the known and unknown victims of violence without too much specificity. I didn’t use conjunctions everywhere they could have gone because I believe the words pack more of a punch standing alone. The spacing of the words and the way they do not form complete sentences in my poem is to encourage slower and more pronounced readings; this is something I was inspired to do by ZONG!
I chose to put this poem on a sunset silhouette. The red and orange hues represent heat and anger, powerful driving forces in violent behavior. Lastly, the spacing of the stanzas are to create a space in thought, preventing run-on ideas from bumping into one another. Though the theme of violence is prominent throughout, I believe spacing the stanzas provide separate thought processes to occur.

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Work for Week of 11/4

Hi all,

Just a reminder that your found poem and artist’s statement should be posted to our course website by 11:59 pm on Wednesday, November 6. Don’t forget to check the box “Found Poem” under “Categories.” Please also bring a hard copy of your poem to class on Monday, November 11, so we can publicly display them!

Make sure to read your classmates’ poems, leave a comment on your favorite, and come prepared to discuss the poems in class on Monday.

Instructions for the artist’s statement as well as midterm revisions can be found in the slides from last week. The midterm revisions handout is also available here.

See you all on Monday, November 11! Happy writing and revising!

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