Creating a “Found” Poem Name_______________
Found poems takes words and phrases from existing text and refashions them, reorders them, and then presents them as poems. They are literary equivalent of a collage. A “pure found poem” uses only words and phrase found in the original text presented in the order in which they appear.
Whether the found poem is a “pure found poem” or a variation that adds a few words, it must maintain the integrity of the original selection.
Part I. Example of a Found Poem.
Read the following excerpt from The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen and then read the example of the found poem that was created from the text.
Hannah slipped uneasily into sleep, with the sounds of seventy women around her. Some of them were noisy sleepers, punctuating their dreams with snores. One or two cried out sharply in their sleep.
And one woman wept throughout the night, low horrible sobs that rose in pitch until someone got up and comforted her. Then she would begin her sobbing again, slowly gathering volume and strength.
Hannah’s dreams were filled with the sobs, but in the dreams they were cries of joy. She dreamed she was in a schoolyard where girls in blue dresses and blue pants with brightly colored sweaters hooked arms and laughed, shutting her out from their group. When she woke, she was crying. Her upper arms, which had served as her pillow, were wet. The sweater she had used for a blanket had slipped to the floor. She could not remember the dream.
The Devil’s Arithmetic a Found Poem
“Sleep”
The sounds of one or two cried out sharply.
One woman wept, sobbing again.
Dreams were filled with cries.
She dreamed.
She woke,
She was crying.
Slipped to the floor.
Remember the dream!
Part II. Creating Your Own Found Poem.
Directions: Underline, circle, or highlight words and phrases that you find interesting or intriguing in the following text taken from The Devil’s Arithmetic. Select at least twenty words or phrases, although you my select more. Next, begin to arrange the words and phrases that you have selected into an original poem maintaining the original integrity of the text. Your poem must be ten lines long, you may or my not use all the words and phrases that you selected.

The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
Have you ever opened a familiar door only to be transported to the past… to a different time and place? Hannah does just this. At her family’s Passover Seder in New Rochelle, she opens the door and when she turns around and goes back inside, she is in a different house. There are different people, people she does not know, has never met. They speak a different language, but strangely she understands it and can communicate with them in it. She is now in Poland. The year is 1942.
Confused at first, she keeps trying to tell her new Polish family that she is American, from New
Rochelle. They think that she was sick and has not fully recovered, so they discount what she is saying. She and the people who claim to be her relatives head out to a wedding. On the way, they notice some trucks. Alarms do not go off for anyone. They do not see the impending doom. For
Hannah, however, memories from her past (the future) come back. She remembers studying about
WWII and the Holocaust in school, and she remembers the stories her grandparents told her about being in the concentration camps. Those were the stories she was sick and tired of hearing about. She never really understood why they were such a big deal. Now that she sees these trucks, and recognizes that they should not be there, she asks her cousin what year it is and realizes that it is 1942. The
NAZIs were coming to take the Jews to concentration camps. She tries to warn everyone, but they do not believe her. The rabbi believes that he can talk to one of the men in charge, and everything will be settled. The wedding day will go on as it was supposed to. However, they are forced onto trucks, being told that they are being relocated, and their belongings will be forwarded to them. After a long and scary trip via truck and train, they arrive at a concentration camp. Hannah learns first-hand the stories she had heard so many times from relatives and in school. Is it worse to know what is going to happen, or to not know?

Original Found Poem from The Devil’s Arithmetic
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