Finding Poetry and the Man in the Chair

In the winter of 1996, I was struggling to help my Freshman English students understand and appreciate poetry. We were reading Romeo and Juliet, and Shakespeare felt concrete and foreign. Through an article in a professional journal, I stumbled on to the concept of “found poetry.”

Found poetry is verse created out ordinary everyday sources: product labels, cereal boxes, instruction manuals, and newspaper articles. The journal had an example of a poem by Julius Lester called “Parents” based an article from a paper in Arizona.

I presented the Lester poem to my students. Then I showed them two examples of my own: a piece written from a computer program manual and another based on a recent newspaper article.

The article was entitled “Hope grows on vines of love: Faith nourishes paralyzed teen, family.” It was about a high school hockey player who was paralyzed during a game and struggling to recover. I don’t remember my thoughts when selecting this article. I might have wanted a piece about teenager. It was in the “PrepsPlus” part of the Sunday paper, which I rarely read. In addition, the article has strong traditional religious overtones, which is hardly my style. It seems an unlikely selection.

Modeling the process for my students, I wrote a brief piece using the article as my found source:

Hope is where you find it.

O'Connor's eyes

are half open.

"I think I'm in a pretty good mood

for a kid with a broken neck."

hope has become

a finger twitch

"It's very slight,"

a flicker of movement

Doctors may know about

probability

but they don't know about building

hope

"it was just an accident"

"My arms looked

real far away. And my neck

hurt."

Ehhhhh, you're doomed

"It's hard sometimes"

He still has body spasms that frighten him.

"It's never going to get easy,"

it just tears your heart out

But not yet.

It could have been worse.

It isn’t much compared to Lester’s disturbing and professional poem. I figured I needed to show my students some sample found poems. Kids brought in things from menus to maps to magazines. We created all sorts of fun, interesting, and powerful poetry together.

And that was that. For seventeen years, I used this example and wrote a few others.

Then, I went to today’s annual charity drive assembly. Our school holds a big fund raising campaign between Thanksgiving and Winter Break. We have contributed to causes ranging from children with cancer to congenital heart defects to helping soldiers in Africa. This year’s charity helps disabled people engage in athletic activities.

The assembly began with our student council leaders. They talked about why they picked this group: the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association. They introduced the director and she spoke. Then a local mother of a child told her story.

Then they introduced the man in the wheelchair who had been sitting up front beside the podium: J.J. O’Connor. I recognized the name right away, but I wasn’t sure. I whispered to the teacher sitting next to me, “I wonder if he was paralyzed playing hockey.” Sure enough.

It was him: the boy in the article, seventeen years later. He found me. How unlikely! I was amazed.

I ran to my office and retrieved the poem. I couldn’t find the actual article until the end of the day. I got a copy of the poem and rushed back to the assembly, but it was almost time for my next class, so I left the auditorium as the assembly ended. I told my students about it, and they asked, “Why didn’t you go tell him?” My answer was simple, “Because I needed to come to class with you!”

I saw one of the student leaders after school, and he told me that J.J. O’Connor will be at the big charity benefit this Sunday. I’ll be there. I’ll bring the article, and the poem – and my thanks and admiration. I’ll find him again. How poetic!