On Found Poetry

A form of poetry that I'd like to try is "found poetry," also called "blackout poetry" or "subtractive poetry."

This is poetry that is created by choosing words from a piece of writing, e.g., a newspaper article, or a page from a novel, so as to construct a completely new work of poetry.  (I thought it was just poetry you happen to find, like the Google search poems.  But I was wrong.)

It's the idea that poetry is all around us - hidden in everything; you just need to coax it out. It's like sculpting, where you etch away the marble and what remains bursts forth as art.

An excellent primer on the methodology and how-to guide can be found here.  The New York Times also has a clever blackout poetry creating tool that you can play with. Below are a couple of examples of found poetry that show the power of this technique:

From The Great Gatsby:

From a New York Time's Article about living in micro-houses, entitled "So Small But Already a TV Star":