Found poem finds home
September 16, 2021
Happy Poetry Friday! A quick bit of news today. A local journal here in Connecticut published one of my found poems, "Out of all the ways you could have went about this scenario"; it's in issue #9 (Sept. 15, 2021) of Scribes*MICRO*Fiction.
The poem begins,
Is this the train to New Haven?
You never know
What’s your course?
Someone just texted that they saw me in Miami
Read the rest here. You'll need to scroll down on the page to find it just above a photo of the subway.
Denise Krebs has the Sept. 17th Poetry Friday roundup at her blog, Dare to Care.
What a fabulous find. I love your gleaned lines. And congratulations on your publication!
Posted by: Kathryn Apel | September 17, 2021 at 12:38 AM
So cool, Susan! I love the line, "Sometimes you gotta apologize".
I eavesdrop on the trains here in Switzerland all the time. The only conversations I understand are between toddlers and their mums...because well, I am a toddler in my German language development. :) Congratulations!
Posted by: Bridget Magee | September 17, 2021 at 01:12 AM
Susan, congratulations! Well done. "Please, Papa" is a nice ending. Like the street art, your poem is a snapshot of New York at that very moment. It was a good idea, and I got to read it earlier when you shared it, and now today as a published piece. Great!
Posted by: Denise Krebs | September 17, 2021 at 04:49 AM
Kathryn, Bridget, and Denise, thank you so much for reading! I have so enjoyed my return to participating in Poetry Friday, which helped me get back to writing regularly. I appreciate the good wishes very much. If any of you have poems around 100 words, you might think of submitting them to Scribes*MICRO*Fiction. I revised & expanded this one here so that it would fit. Nice people there!
Posted by: Susan Thomsen | September 17, 2021 at 11:19 AM
Very nice, Susan. The comments you chose for your poem really resonated. I love that they are just disconnected snippets. It made me feel I was clacking along in a subway, which I miss very much doing.
Posted by: janice scully | September 17, 2021 at 12:47 PM
Thanks so much, Janice. A friend used the term "word photography," and I think it fits!
Posted by: Susan Thomsen | September 17, 2021 at 12:57 PM
Oooh, love it, Susan! I love the way these two lines work together:
You should not have said, “Here’s the thing”
That’s not art
Congrats on the publication!
Posted by: Karen Edmisten | September 17, 2021 at 04:00 PM
Karen, thanks so much! I really like finding juxtapositions like that! When you harvest sentences on the street, you're so not in control of the material in a way that virtually everything is a surprise. It's one of my favorite things about the method!
Posted by: Susan T. | September 17, 2021 at 06:39 PM
That's so cool! Congrats. You really captured the feeling of what it feels like to sit on the train hearing but not really paying attention to the conversations. It's just bits and pieces.
Posted by: Linda Mitchell | September 18, 2021 at 10:44 AM
Thanks so much, Linda! I once tried writing a poem of everything I heard and saw aboard the train from CT to NYC. It's very long! And the task was, of course, impossible.
Posted by: Susan Thomsen | September 18, 2021 at 10:57 AM
Fun found poem Susan, I like the surprise that each line and stanza offers us, your lines in the beginning,
"You never know
What’s your course?"
plays out throughout the poem. Congrats on the publication!
Posted by: Michelle Kogan | September 19, 2021 at 12:36 AM
How wonderful that your found poem, found a wider audience. Congratulations!
Posted by: Elisabeth | September 19, 2021 at 02:49 AM
Michelle and Elisabeth, thanks so much for stopping by and for your nice words here. Constructing the poems after gathering the lines is a big challenge, and I'm glad to hear what you say!
Posted by: Susan Thomsen | September 19, 2021 at 11:05 AM
Congrats, Susan--you did a nice job order those snippets to create a *kind* of narrative without losing any of the random mystery.
Posted by: Heidi Mordhorst | September 19, 2021 at 04:13 PM
Heidi, thanks! I am working on a collection of these poems.
Posted by: Susan Thomsen | September 19, 2021 at 09:26 PM
I love this! Especially the title!
Posted by: Ruth | September 20, 2021 at 04:07 PM
Thank you! I have to admit that the title made me laugh when I heard it. Often I can't tell whether an argument is taking place or whether the speaker is just relaying the story of a they said/I said argument to a third party. I didn't know what the case was here, but the speaker, who was sitting on some steps and talking, did sound exasperated...and funny. I don't remember who said what in every case, but I do in this one.
Posted by: Susan Thomsen | September 20, 2021 at 05:06 PM
Many a time, I listened to conversations on the trains in NYC but here you captured the times so nicely. Congratulations on your publication of this poem. Susan.
Posted by: Carol Varsalona | September 21, 2021 at 07:33 AM
Thanks so much, Carol! Some of them you just can't help paying attention to, right?
Posted by: Susan Thomsen | September 21, 2021 at 08:29 AM
Congratulations!
Posted by: Mary Lee | September 22, 2021 at 04:12 PM
Thank you, Mary Lee!
Posted by: Susan Thomsen | September 22, 2021 at 04:45 PM