The original poem “Closed Doors” by Jane Kirby is about anti-bullying. Its point of view is based on a person being bullied. How a person feels when being bullied. My strategy when reworking this poem was to just go with the flow. Whatever makes sense and flows easily is what I’ll put on the paper. I choose the black background because bullying is not something to be bright and colorful about.
When I finished gluing the words on the paper, I realized that it sounded like a bully’s point of view. The poem talks about how the bully feels and ends up being extremely dark. I only used words from the poem so to be able to turn it from being the person being bullied point of view to the bully itself was quite amazing!
Kirby Jane, Published by Family Friend Poems November 2011
Response: I wrote this poem as a response to the overturning of the landmark SCOTUS case, Roe v. Wade. This decision to overturn the case divided the country heavily, with women arguing that they should be the only ones who can make decisions about their body. Many women were upset by this decision, one of them being singer/songwriter Billie Eilish. As a response to this, as well as some other upsetting events in her life, she wrote her song “TV,” which was the song I used as inspiration for this found poem. This poem is from the point of view of a woman who had an abortion and blames herself for it being overturned.
Response: The song/poem I chose to turn into my found poem was “Criminal” by Eminem. My method in creating this poem was to try and use at least one word/sentence from each verse of the song to create a cohesive sentence different from the base text. The original song is so offensive it was extremely difficult to use the words Eminem used in a different context then how he meant them. I tried to mimic the space on the page similar to how Zong! Was written. I noticed often times the spacing in the lines allows you to read sentences in different ways then you might have the way normal poems are written so i tired to play around with were i placed words to see if they could create different sentences in itself. From this experience I learned just how difficult it must have been to write Zong! It is such a difficult process to go through, using words meant for one context and replacing them to another, and it was really interesting to try my hand at!
The education system in the US has many flaws. These flaws play into teachers’ performance, which affects students’ ability to learn. All my life I have wanted to be a teacher. I have a lot of support from my parents, but my grandparents always tried to steer me away from teaching. They’d tell me things like “I hope you like to work, because you’re gonna need two jobs just to survive” or “why don’t you go where the money is”, which was very discouraging to me, but money isn’t why I wanted to be a teacher. I want to help children learn, because I believe that children are the most important members of society, and their education is one of the most important things for society to prosper. But I always contradict myself, because I want a family of my own, and teachers do not get paid enough. The current system bases teachers’ pay from seniority, meaning a teacher who has been teaching for a lot of years will make much more than a teacher who just started. This makes sense and I’m not saying starting teachers should make insane amounts of money, but just because you’ve done something for a while, doesn’t mean you are great at it. Teachers should be paid based on evaluation.
The better you teach, the more you get paid. There are some districts that do follow this system, but this system should be implemented nationwide. This change will encourage teachers to teach in the best way possible, which allows kids to learn the most. The more teachers teach, the more kids learn, the more teachers get paid. This system will benefit everyone.
This poem highlights who’s in the wrong, who it affects, and offers a change. The who in the wrong is the legislature and current system we have today. The who being affected is the teachers, the children, and the schools. And the change is the change in system. I arranged this poem so that the title catches your attention. It makes you question who is the “I”, who is the “you”, how much does the “I” make, how much does the “you” make. This is a lyric from a song named “R.I.C.O” by Meek Mill and Drake. Meek mill is talking to his teachers in this lyric, who had previously shown doubt on Meek’s potential. He says that he now can spend a teacher’s salary in a single day of shopping, the average teacher’s salary being 45 thousand dollars. That is an insane amount of money to spend in a day, but it doesn’t seem to be that great of an amount for a yearly salary. This upset me because teaching is one of the most important professions, but teachers are paid a salary that someone could spend in a day. In my poem, each word/phrase on the left starts an idea. Each new idea relates to the whole. I decided to cut out words that don’t hold that much meaning, and I believe the words I left in hold the most power. The ending of my poem highlights the system we have today, what it is, who it affects, and the outcome, and it highlights a change that is needed, which benefits not only the teachers, but the children too, who are the ones affected the most.
“Sex Without Love,” by Sharon Olds is a poem we explored in my literary analysis class. I was stuck on what to use for this assignment, until I realized you could mostly work with whatever you have. I tried to look at this poem in a creative artistic way and rearrange it in a way that the most profound lines were seen. I think deconstructing another piece of writing and rearranging it is really cool and interesting. It goes to show that things can be analyzed and interpreted in an endless number of ways.
This was actually a therapeutic assignment and brought out a creative side of myself. I pasted the really significant excerpts of the poem onto a different color paper. I did this because I feel like there are layers behind the things Olds writes in this poem. I feel that you can delve in deeper and explore the many layers behind the words. I tried to add texture and some different shapes as well because the poem is very abstract. This was a really cool and interesting approach for literature, because literature is a form of art in my opinion. I think this is a cool exercise to take a look into different pieces of writing from a different perspective. It is a more artistic and fun way to study the writing rather than feeling like a chore. You can really engage your creative side.
My found poem comes from the song “Kill You’ by Eminem. My thought process on creating this poem was to highlight all of the violence and aggression that is portrayed in the song. There is even a line about him raping his own mother. My goal for the poem was to make it about someone who is just very angry in society. Someone who is disrespectful and a selfish person who only cares for themselves. In particular, they are sexist and look down on women. As shown through the vast amount of words used to describe them. I was initially nervous when I was making this poem as there are so many derogatory terms, but I realized that is the whole point and purpose. My process on the poem was to go line by line focusing on what was most effective and graphic. I decided to use the black marker to cross out the words I did not want to focus on. I think doing that instead of cutting out what I wanted to focus on emphasizes the power and anger of the words I used even more.
Hold Me While You Wait is the song lyrics I chose to use. Everytime I listen to this song and look at the lyrics I always feel a connection to it. The words that the artist uses makes me think about my life and what I can let go of and still hold onto. The song uses “I wish” multiple times in it, and when I listen to it, I have my own wishes to think about, but as other people listen to it they think about their own things. This song inspired me to create my found poem from it and I want readers to know that it’s okay to not always save yourself. It is okay to get help from others and get saved from other people.
After reading the song over a couple of times I really wanted to point out some of what I think are the key points. When I listen to this song it reminds me of a person to remember to themselves that they are still worthey, the still need to fight for themselves, and there will always be someone else there to back you up. Even when someone is feeling very alone, they will always have someone by their side. I purposely put three “I Wish” lyrics down in the poem because I think that it is important that people do have wishes and that they do see them come to life. I hope this message can get through to everyone, for them knowing that they are not alone.
The method I used for creating the poem was a simple cut and paste method where I found words or sentences that I felt would make a new poem flow and would get the general meaning across. I looked for simple yet clear statements that allow the reader to mentally see what the words say and can understand and placed them on the page like the title crawl in a Star Wars movie. Using the effect of eye tracking to allow it to flow down.
When working on the poem I just felt a similar feeling I felt that day when it happened. I just reminded me why I was pretty upset about it and just reminded me that memories can actually invoke feelings. From working on this I got a sense of what Zong! was trying to do and place what seem like separate words into a connected story that describes and invokes feelings through memories whether that be felt through first, second, or third person.
“Molly’s Champagne” is a poem based off of the song lyric, “Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it / took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it” from the song She Doesn’t Even Know it written by Rick Ross. I went along with this poem by interpreting that “molly” and “champagne” are the two bug key words. I decided to put those in the middle to grab the attention of the readers. I was inspired by Phillip’s strategy of how she replaces one word from a sentence and it changes the whole perspective on that certain sentence. For example I used “she ain’t even know it” and by the end of the poem I used “she ain’t ever know it”. I also loved the thought of “filling in the blanks” with a word to a sentence which I tried to incorporate in this poem as well. I also tried to go about when reading the poem you get that realization of maybe what the poem is about.
While creating this poem I realized how difficult it was to not just throw random words on a page, but to throw random words on a page with meaning. Difficult to portray your meaning behind the poem with room to interpret for readers as well. It changed my perspective on why Phillips created a whole book with a found poem technique. You start to appreciate the talent these writers have to create these amazing and thoughtful poems. I really enjoyed this project, it really brought out the creative side in me.
My found poem came from the song “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke. Growing up I actually enjoyed this song and would listen to it often, not knowing the true meaning behind the lyrics. As I got older, I started to realize the true meaning behind Thicke’s lyrics in the song “Blurred Lines”. This song comes across as offensive towards women. The lyrics to this song focus on sexual violence, objectifying women and reinforcing rape myths.
For my found poem I decided to cut up the lyrics and rearrange them on a piece of paper. I related my poem back to the book Citizen by Claudia Rankine. In the book Citizen, we see how individuals who are different feel like they are invisible and not seen for who they really are. I decided to title my poem “Blurred Lines: Feeling Unseen” because to me blurred lines comes across as something that is confusing or indistinct. My found poem expresses how an individual can be seen as an animal for being different and not seen for who they really are. It shows how one may be confused or unclear about an individual who is different than them. I really enjoyed creating my found poem. This activity helped me to better understand how Phillip came up with her poems in Zong!.
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