A Feminist Poet on Found Poetry in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

By: Kimberly Burnham

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This collection of poems was gathered from within the pages of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The page numbers in the title of each poem refers to the page in the book. Found poems are original poems created from words found on the pages of books, novels, dictionaries, magazines, scholarly journal articles, or advertisements in the local newspaper. The found poem can be written out in the same order that the words were found on the page or the poet may rearrange the words found on a particular page. The poet may create visual poetry by circling the words on the page and then drawing something in color or black and white that obscures the rest of the words leaving only the found words of the poem readable. Another way to look at found poems is as a kind of graffiti, where the poet takes the original words out of context, sprays them into a new context by coloring out all the rest of the words on the page. And like graffiti, some authors love how the words and color change their original book or building and others feel it is a sacrilege that a poet or an artist used their work as a backdrop for creating something new. Universe Echoes pg 111 Mind the universe gazing at truth will power a plaything of sound awake and find me greater power a dream witches voices revealed