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!
