. . . . . . . . . . (Velma West with members of her legal team)Texas (a found poem)
"Velma West was captured in Dallas after a five week long fling. West is serving a life sentence in Ohio for bludgeoning her husband to death with a claw hammer after he refused to attend a bridge party in Cleveland."
(Dayton Daily News, July 26, 1939)
I wanted to see some cowboys.
I'd been in jail the last 12 years.
The board of pardons told me
it was useless for me to seek
release. I found the world
changed. I bummed rides
mostly on trucks, and worked
my way south through Indiana,
Kentucky, Arkansas, then Texas.
I saw a lot of scenery.
I'd never been out of Ohio before.
I visited a couple of honky tonks.
I didn't get to see a talking picture.
I did want to see one of those talkies.
They weren't so much when I
went to prison in '28.
I don't know whether
I would call this a "fling."
Some of the time it's been
hard work. I believe
I could have rebuilt my health
though I don't know about my life.
I wouldn't escape again if I had a chance.
I just wanted one last adventure
before I am too old. I'm ready
to go back and be good.
What's the use in fighting my return?
No sense in making it hard on the authorities.
They always treated me real fine.
I just wanted to travel. See some
cowboys. But I am disappointed.
I haven't seen a one.
(from the chapbook STUNNED BY THE MOMENT, 1991 - also published in "The Panhandler")
[NOTE: See the "comment" below if you are interested in listening to me drone on and on about "found poems"]
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1 comment:
A "found poem" is pretty much what it says: phrases, sentences, paragraphs that are found somewhere, and for some reason they strike the reader as poetry, or at least, unintentionally "heightened" language. Found poems can show up anywhere: as graffiti; a note left on a kitchen counter; in a job description; a news story; a recipe, etc.
Some of the Dadaists and Beat poets took the concept quite literally. They would cut pages into individual words or phrases and then throw them into the air. The found poem was the order in which the pieces of paper landed on the ground.
My found poems are frequently narratives and consist entirely of quotes from an individual or individuals. The only thing that I change is the order of the quotes. This is done to advance the narrative.
For the poem "Texas" I was struck by how innocent, almost childlike, Velma West's statements were, especially in light of the nature of her crime. Every line in the poem was spoken by Velma West in five or six different newspaper articles.
If you enjoy narrative found poems, but cannot find them anywhere, you should check out Edgar Lee Masters' A Spoon River Anthology. Although the entries in this collection are fictionalized epitaphs for the unique citizens of a make-believe town, and not actually found poems, many of them read just like found pieces. A Spoon River Anthology is kind of a posthumous and verse version of Sherwood Anderson's brilliant novel Winesburg, Ohio. Both serve as "guide books" to the oddball characters of a fictionalized town.
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