A "Found Poem"
Dressing with Machiavelli
After a day of snaring thrushes
drinking with the yokels
tasting the malign dregs of destiny,
I take off your muddy,
everyday clothes
and dress to appear as a
Florentine envoy
before a royal court.
Decently attired
to enter the antique courts
of great men of antiquity
I lose myself
for four happy hours.
They receive me.
Banishing the famine with nourishment,
oblivious to my exile and
reduced circumstances,
they offer friendship.
Forgotten troubles cannot
impinge on my happiness.
Thoughts of poverty or death
cannot obscure my delight
in the colloquy with great men.
I transform myself
entirely in their likeness
in December of 1513.
From Lettere, ed. By G. Lesca (Florence, 1929) pp. 88-90 in The Foundations of Early Modern Europe by Eugene F. Rice, Jr. and Anthony Grafton.
"A 'found poem' is a piece of writing that was not intended as a poem, but is so declared by its 'finder.' Parts of newspaper articles are often declared to be 'found poems', as are lists, notes passed among children, scraps of conversation, and other incidental uses of to those exceptional uses of language or sharply presented, telegraphic stories that create a poetic effect or an emotional response as strong as that made by a poem. Writing a found poem often requires creative skills similar to those used in the actual creation of the art, deciding the poem's limits and line-breaks. The poet does not enjoy the license to change, add, or omit words, a rule often broken."
from The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms by Ron Padgett
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