No photograph to-day, my camera batteries have died and it's too hot to walk in to town until this evening. However, the poets on Poetry Kit have been talking about 'found poetry'which is taking an extract from prose, arranging the line lengths as they would be if a performance poet was reading them, and either highlighting the original writer's intentions, or casting a new light on to the words. William Shatner did this to a Sarah Palin campaign speech, I was told.
One of the treasures left by a previous occupant of this cottage (along with John Pilger's 'Hidden Agendas'is Thomas L Friedman's 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree'a highly informative and entertaining treatise on globalisation.
Here is a 'found poem'fashioned from Friedman's prose, I have changed only the line lengths,
AMERICAN GOTHIC 2 views
Straightlaced couple, pitchfork in hand
expressions controlled
stoically standing watch
in front of their barn
To twenty something software engineers
long hair, beads and sandals
rings in their noses, paint on their tows
they kick down your front door
stick a big mac in your mouth
slam a cable box into your television
lock the channel to MTV
plug an internet connection into your computer
and tell you
"Download or die."
That's us, we are
Apostles of the fast world
enemies of tradition
prophets of the free market
high priests of high tech
We want
a web site in every pot
a pepsi on evey lip
Microsoft Windows in every computer
and most of all
everyone
everyone everywhere
pumping their own gas.
found on page 384 The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L Friedman
Anchor Books 200, ISBN 0 385 49934 5
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