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 Write a Found Poem

Write a Found Poem
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 4 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   5.39

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    minimum, demonstration, various, mysterious, text, poetry, fond, meaning, collection, mystery, punctuation, scavenger, assignment, title, interesting, section
     content words:    Myrtle Beach, Brandon Sales Co, Verizon Wireless, Brenda Covert, Poet Katie Haegele, Boy Scout Handbook, Find Your Way

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Write a Found Poem
By Brenda B. Covert 		  
1     Where does one go to search for a found poem? Would you check the "Lost and Found" at school? Maybe you would read the ads in a daily newspaper. Perhaps you would study traffic signs and billboards! You can do all of those things and more.
 
2     Found poetry is the art of taking groups of words that you find in other texts and organizing them until they form a poem. It's like a scavenger hunt where you are sent out to find interesting words and phrases and return with them! From there it becomes a puzzle where you take the words and fit them together until you find a pattern that makes sense, giving them new life and meaning in a poem.
 
3     Puzzled? Here is a brief demonstration. While sitting at my desk, I look at a stack of mail. One envelope has an advertisement on the cover. Part of it says: Introducing friends and family. I like that, so I write it down. Then I notice a postcard that I bought while on vacation. I reach for it and turn it over to read: Greetings from Myrtle Beach, SC ... where every sunrise starts another beautiful day. Ooh, I really like that! So I write it down as well. I think about searching for other words, but I think maybe I have enough for a small poem. So I go to work with what I found. The following is the final result:

Written by Anonymous, Postcard by Brandon Sales Co., 1996
Postcard "Greetings from Myrtle Beach, SC"
Envelope from Verizon Wireless
Found by Brenda Covert


Myrtle Beach
Friends and family
Every sunrise starts
Another beautiful day


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