The article I used for my found poem was not something I saw right away that upset me. This is about a young man named Danye Jones who was found dead hanging from a tree. It’s a sensitive topic to talk about and it is upsetting, but what is more upsetting is the reason I used this for my poem. The way I had found out about this was not through the news, but through social media. The police and detectives with the “Crime Against Persons” association are ruling this incident out as a suicide. No matter what the evidence says, no one just seems to care enough about a young black man being murdered for it to be spoken about publicly. Social media platforms have even been deleting posts about this topic.

Danye’s mother, Melissa McKinnies, has been an active protester for the Black Lives Matter movement for a long time. McKinnies believes that this is the reason for these happenings. In the past they have received dangerous packages delivered to their door, constant threats, and now the death of her own son. McKinnies states that the bedsheets that had been used for the murder do not match any that were in their house, and Danye had never showed any sign of being upset, let alone being suicidal.

I saw the posts about the death of Danye Jones on Twitter and had decided to look into it myself. I discovered nothing on the actual news websites or anything I usually read/watch daily news on, I had only found blogs and of course more posts and hashtags on social media. It took me a couple of drafts and a few printouts of this article to really find the perfect way to portray this matter but in reality no words can really describe the pain that these people go through when our own authority is against us.

I chose the article, “Michigan Woman Says Pharmacist Denied Her Miscarriage Drug” to create my found poem. Through the use of this article, I was able to show the struggles many women are facing currently, in the past, and inevitably, in the future.

Rachel Patterson, a Michigan woman, was pregnant with twins when both died in her womb. As you can imagine, this is can be very devasting to anyone in her position. Her doctor prescribed her a medicine that would help with the miscarriage so she could speed up the process and could deal with the grieving process easier.  When she went to the pharmacy to get her prescription, the pharmacist denied her of her medication due to his own beliefs of being a Christian.

The medication prescribed to Patterson was a medication commonly used for stomach ulcers in men. So not only was she denied this medication because of other’s beliefs, but also because she is a woman.

In my found poem, I summarized the article I chose to emphasize the wrongdoings done to Patterson. But also help spread awareness of the inequality and injustices several people face due to differences of opinions and beliefs.

 

My poem represents the mass amount of female stereotypes that regard women as less important and less powerful than men. Our society favors masculinity and the attributes that are attached to the male gender. This leads to the overall disrespect of females. The stereotypes of women (weak, emotional) are mainly considered negative while the typical stereotypes of men (simple, strong, competitive) are considered powerful, making them socially acceptable as the superior sex.

Often when stereotypes towards women such as ‘they cant drive’ are said, it is not always considered rude at the time and usually gets the response of humor. When these stereotypical terms are brought together in one place, it reveals how the mass amount of demeaning stereotypes truly disrespect women. Such as the rivalry between accepted stereotypes, the search for equality is a never ending war. Men and women will never be widely considered as equal because of societies favorable perception of men.

The sixth line of the poem symbolizes the power that men have. Even when women are involved and stand out, they aren’t perceived as capable and as bold as men are. Discrimination is still wide spread even after all of the achievements we have progressed towards over the years.

 

My found poem is based off of a true event that happened in late December of the year 1996. The death of JonBonet Ramsey was a huge headliner during this time because she was found and killed in her own home the day after Christmas. The article I had found and used as my poem was published on January 1st, 1997 by the New York Times. This article describes in great lengths what had happened and had most of the key insights into the event.  

 

I used this article because it has always been a topic that has made me upset. JonBonet was a 6-year-old girl, who “had everything” and whose life was taken way too soon. The mystery behind this case still lingers today due to the fact that the killer has still not been found. Many people tend to believe that someone of the family or a friend of the family had a role in her murder but no evidence to back it up, just conspiracies.

With this article, I initially used white out to get rid of words that did not have much of a significant role to the event. After whiting out the words, I then printed out another copy of the article and cut out the words that I left on the first copy. Then, I reorganized some but not all of the words to present them in a way that would be of better understanding to the reader and demonstrate the sadness and mystery of this murder case. Unlike Philip in her found poem, ZONG!, I wanted the readers to fully understand the case rather than have some misunderstanding and confusion.

 

Unlike most found poems, at least the ones we have seen in ZONG!, this found poem has barely any blank space due to the empowering message the words I had collected give to the poem. I tried my best to create a simpler version but I felt that the words I had chosen needed to stay in the work rather than tossed out.

For my found poem I decided to use a reading we had in class. This reading really caught my attention because it showed me how unaware most Americans truly are about wealth gaps. Being that I am a minority I personally felt like I had a pretty good idea about inequalities when it comes to economic status. However,  in the reading “Whites Have Huge Wealth Edge Over Blacks (but Don’t Know It)” By Emily Badger, I realized how little Americans; including myself, are educated on these economic problems. I came to realize that Americans tend to pacify the true economic status that whites hold over minorities. Although the wealth gap is extremely large the income gap is much less drastic between whites and minorities. When looking at the income gap Americans believe that we are making great progress toward equal pay but what Americans fail to look at is wealth. 

I decided to use the perception vs reality graph in my found poem to emphasize the true awareness most Americans lack with wealth gaps. I feel like this graph shows how America’s perception on economic status between minorities and whites are almost completely dependent on income. The fact that the income and wealth gaps are so drastically different sheds light on the further economic inequalities that minorities have to deal with outside of having equal pay. I wanted to this poem to be an eye opener about what economic equality really looks like, and how we need to educate ourselves on how unequal our economy truly is. As Americans we need to be aware about equality and regress from ” the motivation to see the world as fair” without making the changes needed for America to truly become fair.

I chose this article titled “Driver who hit and killed 3 siblings saw flashing lights, but didn’t realize it was a school bus picking up the children: Police” because the story made me mad and upset. The article is about how a woman driving a pickup truck hit and killed three children getting on their school bus in the morning. The driver claimed that she didn’t realize that the flashing lights were a school bus and that she needed to stop. The driver’s statements are inaccurate because she was obviously distracted by something and it was too late before she realized she had made a horrible mistake.

I chose to cross out the words from the title “didn’t realize” because this is a false statement that the driver used as an excuse for hitting the children. Also, I included short phrases from the article in order to make sure the poem resembled the entire article and to make the poem more intense through word choice. For example, I used “classmate and neighbor” to create an emotional connection in my poem. I also used the quote “died at the scene” to show how terrible the tragedy was. While creating my found poem I learned that found poems are a good way to express your own style of writing. You can take the words and arrange them however you want to create any type of message you want to display. My message was that the innocent children were killed because one driver wasn’t paying attention.

The original article that my found poem is from is an article about a school shooting in Texas. I chose this topic because these are so common in today’s society. There seems to be a new report on gun violence in schools every day. However, little is being done to prevents such tragedies. Most of the stories seem to mimic each other. The suspect is often depicted as a loner who was bullied throughout their lives, and their peers had no idea how this student truly felt. Instead of other students reaching out to their classmate to find out why they felt so excluded, they often bully them instead. The beginning half of my poem highlights how these students may feel prior to the incidents. The article spoke about how school shooters often copy the antics of others, especially the Columbine shooters. They dress the same and say the same things as past shooters on social media. These red flags are often ignored by fellow students and the authorities, which allows these tragedies to continue.

The second part of my poem shows the reactions of those in the community when a tragedy takes place.  Everyone in the community always feels a sense of guilt after an event such as a school shooting for not picking up on the warning signs. However, other communities do not look for the same signs in their own communities, and act surprised if this happens to their school too. In a way, it seems that society is surrendering to teen bullying and violence instead of trying to solve the issue at hand. Families should feel safe sending their children to schools, yet there is a fear in both the parents and children due to the fact that society is doing little to nothing to change the fate of these students.  

For my found poem, I chose to use an article that a women wrote about her sexual assault and what happened after. Sexual assault is a very big issue that I think needs more attention. In the article, the women, named Carolyn, explains how her life changed and what disorders she fell victim to after her victimization. This happens to way to many people and it happens way too often and I wanted to bring attention to the issue.

In my found poem, I purposely space the first three lines far apart from each other because I want readers to feel the emphasis and impact of what happened. Then I clumped the two last lines together because without support she would never have healed from the disgust and shame she felt. I made sure the poem was short and I made sure I used important words that popped out of the article in order to get the idea of what Carolyn went through across.

Mateer Found Poem

Mateer is a man who has made derogatory comments about transgender CHILDREN. I feel a profound sense of disappointment—an emotion even stronger than anger (for me, anyway)—whenever I read articles such as this. I WANT to be surprised by such hatred—and I don’t use this word lightly, Mateer’s comments were cruel—but I am not anymore. I oftentimes want to block such hatred out of my world… so that is what I did, for this poem.

I decided to use a digital format to make this poem. I chose this for two reasons. Number one being: I see hatred on the internet more often than I see it in real life. Two being that I can completely blackout words online, whereas, on paper, words are harder to erase completely.

I tried to black out as much of the hatred as I possibly could. I subverted the cruel statements by changing their focus. Trans children aren’t the work of the devil, but hatred is his work. I left in some of the facts, but I made sure to position them in such a way that positive statements surrounded them. We can never completely erase hatred, but we can surround it with positive messages to negate its influence.

For my found poem, I decided to work with an article discussing the #MeToo Movement. The article I reconstructed talked about how justice for these abused women took entirely too long and that their voices deserved to be heard, as they had been silenced for long enough. On a personal level, I couldn’t really relate to the article, as I’ve never experienced anything like that. However, as a woman, I truly felt so bad for these women and their families and hearing that they’ve finally shared their stories really resonated with me and filled me with relief. Too often, women are blamed for what happens to them, and I think the article did a really good job of, it seemed to me, congratulating the women for stepping up and being heard.

I decided to take pieces of the article and almost summarize what happened, with harsh words and fragments, and empty spaces to show that justice took too long. I included the “stay silent/Nassar” part right before the part that says “150 women/allowed to be heard/no matter what it cost” just to reiterate the fact that this is about the women, not about the abuser.

By creating my own found poem, and I may be the only one but, I’ve really come to like poetry. Before, I loved to read poetry but I had never actually written a poem. I think through avoiding all the rules of grammar and creating something unique is a really amazing experience and I’m actually really proud of the poem I created. The only thing is, I struggled with ordering the words and phrases because so many different combinations made sense.

I look forward to reading everyone else’s poems! 🙂