ART + LITERATURE

Scraping Hair from the Mastodon in the Room — an Artistic Experiment

A Saturday morning foray into found poetry via social media

Photo by John Benitez on Unsplash

Poetry is everywhere. Or can be. If you look back at that subheading for a moment, there are dual examples of alliteration — ‘Saturday morning’/‘social media’; ‘foray’/ ‘found poetry’— more or less balanced either side of the thrusting central pivot of ‘into’.

It wasn’t deliberate. At least it was not a conscious decision on my part, which is perhaps not quite the same thing, for there may be a deliberate will or force or demiurge beneath, within and above us that guides our hand.

It is Saturday morning, and the poetic experiment I describe and present here involves found poetry and social media. What else could I reasonably have written?

‘Foray’ is another matter. I had numerous choices there. ‘Venture’, ‘initiative’, ‘exploration’, ‘journey’, ‘delve’… But ‘foray’ forced itself to the top of my mind, and the next thing I knew, there it was. Sitting catlike on the page, preening and licking its poetic alliteration.

Commonplace occurrences, ways that words invite us to consider and perceive them. We cannot look at the moon, a stone, a hunk of bark or piece of toast without…