Sonnet in found poetry

guess you could say that I hit any shot

 

He’s a young man we redshirted last year

For what you can put in those big green bins

So we all just wanted to come out here

Help board members do their due diligence

 

Operators who want to set up shop

One of the questions that I’m going to put

he tore a hamstring going into camp

A ridiculous recovery shot

 

Is this recyclable or is it not

My career was complete after this win

Guess you could say that I hit any shot

For what you can put in those big green bins

 

He barks wrong club wrong club wrong club and kicks

No level of transparency would make 

 

 

Source

McDaniel, Jason. “Receivers Shine In Spring Game.” Houston Chronicle 12 Apr. 2014: C7.

 

Drellich, Evan & Ortiz, Jose de Jesus. “Zeid’s Arm Spray Draws Review From MLB.” Houston Chronicle 12 Apr. 2014: C4.

 

Kroichick, Ron “Watson Stands out In a Crowd.” Houston Chronicle 12 Apr. 2014: C1.

 

Cesar, Maria Luisa. “Educators Balk at ‘Fact-Finding’ Funds.” Houston Chronicle 12 Apr. 2014: B1, B5.

 

Morris, Mike. “City’s Recycle Program Adding Cartons.” Houston Chronicle 12 Apr. 2014: B3.

 

Note:

Sonnets do not remotely come naturally. I considered lots of ways of breaking the form, and I had very limited time, so this is what I did.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Write a sonnet sourced from lines found in newspaper articles. You may choose your own sonnet type ( Examples here) and should feel free to be creative with the rules. One known Oulipo variation is “sonnets of variable length,” in which one must compose a sonnet in which the lines are either as short as possible or as long as possible.

univocalism- fastball special. Dallas

fastball

 

Dallas was as hard

as balls;  Matt and

Marc had always had

bass and that was all.

small awards, jays.

Small sparks and

that was all. Dallas

was as hard as balls.

  

 Source

Drellich, Evan. “Keuchel Benefits As Bats Awaken.” Houston Chronicle 11 Apr. 2014: C1, C7.

 

Note:

Today’s poem, whatever it was, was going to be short. It’s been that kind of a week. I actually started a much longer one, but it was a heartwarming story, with all the words being dark, and it felt kind of disrespectful. Still, I kind of like how it turned out.

 

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

A univocalic text is one written with a single vowel. It is consequently a lipogram in all the other vowels. If he had been univocally minded, Hamlet might have exclaimed, “Be? Never be? Perplexed quest: seek the secret!” All words used must be sourced from your newspaper

a snowball's chance- found poetry, Day 10

unburdens self

 

I,

in

the

men’s

crazy-

making

 

(parents),

 

probably

separated

  

Source

Ulman, Howard. “UMass’ Gordon Unburdens Self, Garners Support.” Houston Chronicle 10 Apr. 2014: B1.

 

Note:

This is a snowball. It’s short, as they usually are. Both the original article and this poem dealt with issues around being a man, albeit very different lenses. This is the order the words appeared in the dictionary. I took some minor liberties with punctuation and spacing, but otherwise stuck with the task. The title is from the title and I imagine the point of confluence between article and poem.

  

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

This procedure requires the first word of a text to have only one letter, the second two, the third three, and so on as far as resourcefulness and inspiration allow. The first word of a snowball is normally a vowel: in English, a I or O.

From your newspaper, select a starting vowel and then continue adding words of increasing length from the same source article or passage. Challenge yourself further by only using words in order as you encounter them in the text.

 

asparagus in the headlines: Found poetry

asparagus signals

Spring (groups’ lobby)

for Texas.

 

To take action on equal pay,

self-cleaning ovens have

drawbacks, bottles each.

 

Deserve to be well-known,

catering to the kosher.

 

Sweet tooth, inspiring bassoonist.

 

 

Sources

Barned-Smith, St.John. “Groups Lobby for Texas to Take Action on Equal Pay.” Houston Chronicle 9 Apr. 2014: B1.

 

Prendergrast, Sylvia. “Inspiring Bassoonist.” Houston Chronicle 9 Apr. 2014: B6.

 

Heloise. “Self-Cleaning Oven has Drawbacks.” Houston Chronicle 9 Apr. 2014: E2.

 

Morago, Greg. “Catering to the Kosher Sweet Tooth.” Houston Chronicle 9 Apr. 2014: F1.

 

Robertson, Dale. “Bottles Each Deserve to be Well-Known.” Houston Chronicle 9 Apr. 2014: F2.

 

Daley, Bill. “Asparagus Signals Spring.” Houston Chronicle 9 Apr. 2014: F6.

 

Note:

Today’s goal was to create poems using headlines only from today’s paper. I selected twenty headlines that seemed promising and played around with various combinations of them. In the end, I only needed six. Well, “needed” is strong.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Compose a poem whose body is sourced from article headlines in your newspaper.

 

surreal caramel: my beau present for oulipost

surreal caramel

my rural sclera….

alarms. mauls clash,

crash, rhyme. acres.

mercury rays-

arms ache, a marsh.

she: caramel

as caramel,

yeah- easy, sure/

real. sacral, calm

as amylase.

 

Source

Wermund, Benjamin. “Controversial Social Scientist’s Visit Creates a Furor at Rice.” Houston Chronicle 8 Apr. 2014: B1.

Note:  

The goal was to create a poem using a name found in the newspaper, and Charles Murray (of Bell Curve fame) obliged by coming to town.

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

 

Select a name from one of your newspaper articles, famous or not. Compose a poem using only words that can be made from the letters in that person’s name. For example, if you selected “John Travolta,” you may only use words that can be made from the letters A, J, H, L, N, O, R, T and V.

The use of web-based tools is highly encouraged to help uncover different words that can be made from your letters of choice. One tool you might consider is the Scrabble Word Finder.

breadfruit! (and bonus Bieber): N+7 Oulipost

Recreation (cruet, breadfruit, raisins)

most fervent  (asterisk) audits:                  

general;                                              

make less on average                         

than mandibles in the same…           

 

clear;

no woodcutter has been

as significant osier thorn

in any of the wound’s

great philosophical

traitors.

 

She supports joist accompanist

and

higher efficiency

 

Sources

Fikac, Peggy. “Ad With Abbott, Chains Makes for Mussed Message.” Houston Chronicle 7 Apr. 2014: B2.

Kearney, Syd. "Record Crowd Braves Rain for Tasty Barbecue Festival.” Houston Chronicle 7 Apr. 2014: B2.

Note:

Day 7, and I have no clue how this turned out. The task was to take a passage and apply the formula to it. But all the really tasty sentences were surrounded by other sentences that were chock full of proper names and party names. In the end, I picked the article I liked and then used the passages that were also quotes. All of the text of the poem is taken from the following three sentences:

 

• Most female assistant attorneys general make less on average than do men in the same job classification.
• No woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world’s great philosophical traditions.
• She supports job access and higher education.

Clearly a theme in the article (the middle sentence is a quote of Charles Murray, not the article author).

For the title of the poem I went next door to the title of the piece beside it in the paper, and ran “record crowd braves rain” through the thingamabob.

 

The generator is a lot of fun. Here’s the chorus of Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’

 

Backcloth, backcloth, backcloth oooh

Like backcloth, backcloth, backcloth nooo
Like backcloth, backcloth, backcloth oooh
I thrill you'd always be minicab

 

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

You’ll want a dictionary for this one! Select a passage from one of your newspaper articles. Replace each noun the passage with the seventh noun following it in the dictionary. A hard-copy dictionary will make the exercise more varied and fun; however, you can also use the online N+7 generator to create your text.

A more traditional form: found blank verse for oulipost (accept it's not my club)

accept it’s not my club 

(I love my club. Except its not my club):

Its high school didn’t teach evolution;

The family cancers would keep coming;

Sometimes he’d literally shut his eyes.


I love my club. Except it’s not my club:

You really want to make your parents proud of you-

She gave me rides until I got my car

(If I do this or that I can turn pro)

You really want to make your parents proud of you:

(I was lost out there on the tour sometimes)

She was so happy when they bought the house

(I love my club, except it’s not my club)

I really didn’t think I could beat him

(You want to make your parents proud of you;

Sometimes he’d literally shut his eyes)

I love my club, except it’s not my club.

Sources

Ackerman, Todd. “This Scientist Just Might Cure Cancer.” Houston Chronicle 6 Apr. 2014: A1, A20, A21.

Robertson, Dale. "River Oaks Sees Giammalva Come of Age.’" Houston Chronicle 6 Apr. 2014: C7.

Marinia, Richard, & Christensen, Sig. “Victim’s Wife Heard Fatal Shots” Houston Chronicle 6 Apr. 2014: B3

Note:

Wow. This was even more work. The task was to find sentences that were iambic pentameter and make a poem out of them. Newspaper stories are surprisingly wordy, with may more composite sentences than you might expect, until you ask yourself, “Holy crap, will this sentence ever end? And how am I supposed to find a sentence short enough” and then you say to your reader, “see what I did there?” I could probably have focused on lines rather than sentences and there were several that really jumped out at me, but I wanted to see what I could do with the tighter constraint of sentences, not just lines. The title is a different take on half of one of the sentences.

In any case, I was happy with the pieces of iambic pentameter I came up with. I didn’t think that there would be repetition, but putting them together in different ways just asked to be done. So I did it.

Here is the prompt I was responding to:

Compose a poem using unintentional lines of iambic pentameter found in your newspaper.