The Arrow Finds Its Mark

Heard, Georgia, ed. 2012. THE ARROW FINDS ITS MARK: A BOOK OF FOUND POEMS. Ill. by Antoine Guiloppe’. ISBN 9781596436657. [Suggested Grade Levels 5-12].

REVIEW:

What is a found poem? It is poetry that can be found anywhere, a poem that takes “existing words, phrases, and sentences from the unlikeliest of places and refashions them as poetry.” Editor Georgia Heard invited a number of well-known poets of poetry for children and young adults to find text that already exists in a form other than poetry and present that text as a poem.

The resulting volume has poems “found” in places such as a Thesaurus, memos, Facebook postings, advertisements, detergent boxes, signs in a store, crossword puzzle clues, and newspapers. Each poet gives the source of the poem. Heard encourages the reader to both look at how the poet constructed the poem from the original text (their processes) and to look for their own found poems. And, of course, it is also a fun read!

CONNECTIONS:

Bring a number of print sources to share—boxes, newspapers, junk mail flyers, magazines, etc and encourage students to “find” their own poems.

Assign each student to a section of the library and have them construct their own poems from book titles.

Get a copy of FOUND magazine which accepts all kinds of found objects—notes, homework, to do lists, and so on and compiles them in a magazine every month. (This is available online or in bookstores.)

RELATED BOOKS:

Another books of “found” type poems:

Kleon, Austin. NEWSPAPER BLACKOUT. ISBN 9780061732973

Other books of unusual concepts in writing poetry:

Levine, Gail Carson. FORGIVE ME, I MEANT TO DO IT: FALSE APOLOGY POEMS. ISBN 978-0061787256

Sidman, Joyce. THIS IS JUST TO SAY: POEMS OF APOLOGY AND FORGIVENESS. ISBN 9780618616800

By Janet Hilbun