A found poem

Found poetry feels a little bit like cheating to me. You pull words and lines from existing sources and reform them to your own purposes. Here’s one I cobbled together from Chapter 42 of “Moby Dick.”

But I “wrote” one anyway, and here it is:

Found Poem

What he was to me could not awaken some alarm,
its intensity so that I almost despair of it.
The whiteness of the whale above all things
might be naught.
Modern kings mark a joyful day; and though
sweet, and honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks
terror, transcendent horrors, ghastly whiteness.
Those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread.
I have frequently seen the thing —
the archangelical apparition loathed by his own,
strangely hideous.
Her ghost is lingering there.
We fail while these terrors seize us,
But let us try.

One thought on “A found poem”

  1. What a cool concept! Sometimes I think rewriting, especially someone else’s words, can be harder than writing a piece from scratch.

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