An experimental form in which the poet takes existing non-poetic text, a newspaper article, a legal document, an advertisement, overheard speech, and presents it as a poem chiefly through selection, arrangement and line breaks rather than original composition, testing the boundary between poetic and ordinary language.
Facts
Place of OriginUnited States and Europe, 20th century, growing out of modernist collage technique. 1 StructureNo fixed meter or rhyme; the poet's craft lies in selecting, excerpting and line-breaking pre-existing non-literary text rather than in composing new language. 1 Notable ExampleCharles Reznikoff's Testimony, composed entirely of found language from American legal case records. 1 Connections
Form Of Genre
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Influenced
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Sources
1. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press
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