With my thanks to International Times and Rupert. You can read the poem here.

One where
dark
fields
stretch
out
ceaselessly
into the unknown.

One where
obscurity
is beyond
tomorrow
year by
year.

One where
what recedes
is somewhere
back in what
we did not know.

One where
brooding wonder
is vast against
the future.

One where
the end is rolled under
what is already.

One where
it is already behind.

(cut-up: The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald)

the writer
interested in figures
began to write
and a procession
of grotesques
crept out of
the writer
before his eyes

at least a small
dream
like a small grotesque
of figures
before his eyes
concerning his thoughts
some almost beautiful

the figures
crept out of the
old writer
once quite handsome
who had been in love
with a long procession
of life

he began to write
he had known people
many different from
the figures
not all horrible
some almost

he had known them
in his eyes
he imagined the eyes
of the writer

you see
the interest in figures
that went before
were the people in his mind
who for an hour
became grotesques
in his head
sleepy but still conscious

and when they passed
during his dream
that was not in the eyes of
the writer
they made his bed

when they passed
and made his bed

(cut-up: Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson)

~

The persons concerned in consideration of
finished pleasure have on certain occasions a
little eternity, a leisure in life of brilliant colours,
a dense pattern long upon the smooth ceremony
of unconscious sex. We should call it the
perfect dusk, known also as to ebb in these
circumstances, shadows of an old man who
smoked cigarettes when grown mellow on such
a privilege. On this occasion a part of the after-
noon was left, itself delightful, and time for tea
with his face turned to a large cup, and now a
little feast of a different quality at this interval
for an elder, and what had waned was with much
circumspection votaries of when shadows were.

(cut-up: Portrait of a Lady by Henry James)

‘Occasions’ is from On the Found, a collection of found poems based on the notional American novel canon (the whole available to download free as a pdf – see the site contents bar). This was my second significant found poetry project in 2017 after completing my first with the notional English novel canon in that same year.

There are many poems I am pleased to have found (two per novel – one from the opening and the other from anywhere else in the text), enjoying the process and outcomes. Since producing, I have reflected on the historical and cultural presumptions of both ‘canons’ and thus understand how narrowed they are by this. However, individual found poems stand for me as positive examples of that experimental process and I will share a few now and then.