What's the correct way to attribute a Found Poem?
- Should Found Poem be in the title?*
- Should the source be cited?
- Is it possible to designate the poem as found in the notes of the ms?
*If it's not in the title--should it be noted as a Found Poem and stated where it was actually found in a submission cover letter?
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I'm starting to wish I never found the damn thing in the first place.
5 comments:
Here's how Annie Dillard, Queen of the Found Poem, did it, at least once. Though I think she cheats because she made a found poem from Vincent's letters to Theo, and Vincent was writing poetry in the first place. Dillard calls her poem a found poem and I have, too, though I only have one, which I'll post for you on Radish King for the next half hour or so. (And I did not cite my sources because there were too many so it probably isn't a real found poem at all though it is.) The source should be cited. I think it's easier to just steal.
MAYAKOVSKY IN NEW YORK: A Found Poem
by Annie Dillard
Lifted, with permission, from Vladimir Mayakovsky's "My Discovery of America" (1926), in America Through Russian Eyes, edited and translated by Olga Peters Hasty and Susanne Fusso.
In all of my found poems I've ended up modifying them or changing them in some way making them not quite found, not quite mine.
Some times I only call it out as a found poem, some times I attribute source. This depends on how thoroughly it has been stolen. The closer it gets to quotation, the more likely I am to attribute it to source.
I'm sure this is the wrong thing, but I would probably just work it into a note in a book.
For a poem, I might just put After so and so as an epigraph. I've also seen poets like James Wright do "In Memory of the Spanish Poet" (or somehting like) as a title.
Hope this helps.
Alison
Thanks, everyone! Much appreciated.
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