Oct 15, 2007

Billy Madison meets Annie

I've been reading this book of poetry by Annie Dillard. It's called Morning's Like This and it is a book of found poems. Found poems are ones that are created using lines and phrases and words that you find around you. Maybe on a billboard or from a newspaper headline. There are several variations of found poems, but Annie uses whole sentences. If, for example, a poem has seven lines, that means that she took seven sentences from seven different sources and put them together to create the poem. She, as the poet, just arranged the sentences, she didn't write a word of them. Here's a short example of Annie's work.

Color

There are many colors and they are all moving,
Moving. Color should flow over the face.

Brilliancy is going toward color, not white.
Color and warmth are coming into our lives.

Lest this turn into an excruciatingly boring post about poetry, I'll go ahead and make the tie into Billy Madison. I want found poems using Billy Madison quotes. For example:

Smiley

When I fell I just broke my leg,
and now you're all in big, big trouble.

Lady you're scaring us!
I've been physically abused in the ear,
do you have any more gum?

That one kinda sucks . . . so whatcha got?



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Omg. You are a genius. My contribution:

Don't tell me my business, devil-woman,I'd rather have a beer.
I thought I was your Snack-Pack
No milk will ever be our milk,
keep spelling, mister.

-j