Mornings Like This
A reading of Annie Dillard's found poetry and the chance to write your own
Mornings like this: I look
About the earth and the heavens:
There is not *enough* to believe—
If you’ve been around a little while, you know I enjoy found poems. I’ve talked about them in this post and this one. You also might have noticed my love for Annie Dillard’s essays (“Sojourners” in her collection Teaching a Stone to Talk is my favorite.) Obviously, I am bound to be a fan of Dillard’s quirky, inventive found poems, as well.
In Mornings Like This: Found Poems, she pulls from a variety of sources—historical nature writing, an 1880’s boys adventure guide, the letters of Vincent van Gogh—and composes lines that are both bizarrely familiar (“What boy can sit all day in a boat / Without experiencing a longing / For some new patent transparent diving bell?) and strikingly expansive (“I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken”). I am charmed and inspired to write my own.
Here’s a found poem I wrote from Amazon reviews of Dorothy Sayers’s first mystery novel, Whose Body (typos included for extra effect). It’s admittedly more interesting (and humorous) if you know the characters, but I hope all of us can enjoy the person who is aching to assign a precise 3.5 stars, rather than three or four:
In the beginning, Bunter
“. . . your choice of words is unerring.”Lord Peter seems rather air-headed and flighty
Gathers depth.
Increases your sympathy; you deeply care: a character study
A moral dilemma. Relapses.Could the stiff in Thipps’s tub be Parker’s missing man?
I got very lost early on trying to work out who was who.you can follow Whimsey's thoughts ..occasionally!
which made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever so I didn’t read them.if this had been edited & was 40 pages shorter, I would have given 4 stars.
It is 45years since I was loaned a book called gaudy night.
why not wallow in a little gentlemanly detection.
Titled sleuth, time and money on his side sounds upsetting,
but this man was buried alive in W W 1
Will have to hunt out my bookcase and re-read them all now.Bunter is even more of a superman.
shallow flippancy is a necessity he willing endures
Lord Peter becomes politer in later books.
I lapped up the details of how adults live.I gave it three stars, but I would have like the option of giving it three and a half.
I have been reading English mysteries and novels for over 70 years.
I was prepared to be awed.
I will certainly not read another one.I almost stopped reading it—several times—
the mostly tedious, almost incoherent writing style.That’s why I gave it four stars.
I don’t think I understood it
Why am I reviewing a 92 year old book?Three stars, perhaps, but the almost 100 years elapsed may make the criteria unjust once you consider the novel’s antiquity.
I have heard that Dorothy Sayers has a following of female readers, so there must be some romance in later novels.
Who’s That Naked Man In My Bathtub?Peter Wimsey can be long winded.
I liked how he methodically got to where he needed to be.
If you’re feeling stuck in your own writing, drafting a found poem can be a good way to shift into creative mode. One of the things I like about writing found poems is the playful possibilities, alongside the way it saves me from staring down an empty page, waiting for inspiration to strike. Inspiration has already struck someone else (sounds dire!), and I get to creatively mine from words that have already been written.
. . . Have you written any found poetry? Would you like to? Grab a favorite essay or novel—or the closest handy piece of writing. Write out the lines that strike you most, then play around with the order. Go back for more phrases and connecting words to make your poem make (at least a little) sense and share below!
If you have a favorite found poem, share that, too.
Onward, Poetry Friends!
Pools in old woods, full of leaves.
Give me time enough in this place
And I will surely make a beautiful thing.
I did not know this book by Annie Dillard existed!