Amanda McCarthy
Found poetry has been saturating the poetry world, from blackout poems to republishing snippets of sex offender law cases. Found poetry is crafted out of any work by rearranging, omitting, or just spacing out a text. In honor of the film adaptation of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer’s release last week, here are five government control books turned into found poetry.
1984, George Orwell:
“It was terribly dangerous to let your
thoughts wander when you
were in any public
place or within range of
a telescreen. The smallest
thing could give you away. A nervous
tic, an unconscious look of
anxiety, a habit of
muttering to yourself – anything that carried
with it the suggestion
of abnormality, of having
something to hide.”
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood:
“Men can imagine their own
deaths, they can see
them coming, and the mere thought of
impending death acts like an
aphrodisiac. A
dog or rabbit doesn’t behave
like that. Take birds — in a lean
season they cut down on the eggs, or they won’t
mate at all. They put their energy into
staying alive themselves until
times get better. But
human beings hope they can stick
their souls into someone else, some
new version of
themselves, and live
on forever.”
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury:
“Nobody listens anymore. I can’t
talk to the
walls because they’re yelling
at me, I can’t talk to
my wife; she listens to
the walls. I just want
someone to hear what I
have to say. And maybe if I talk long
enough it’ll
make sense.”
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut:
“There are almost no
characters in this
story, and
almost no dramatic
confrontations, because most
of the people in it are so
sick and so much
the listless playthings
of enormous forces.”
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer
“At the time, I was seeking
oblivion, and I sought in those
blank, anonymous faces, even the
most painfully familiar, a kind
of benign escape. A death
that would not mean
being dead.”
“[W]hen you see
beauty in
desolation it
changes something
inside
you. Desolation tries
to colonize
you.”