Happiness is...creating a poem.

There's a particular challenge that comes in trying to write a poem, to choose the best words to share your message, or even in deciding what message to share. There is a world of possibility, millions upon millions of words at your disposal to be rearranged and organized in the most particular way, a way that's never been done before. Sometimes it seems daunting at best, impossible at worst. And yet it happens every day.

But there's also a recent (at least I think it's recent) trend to create poetry from words that already exist. Found poems, using others' words to create a meaning all your own. Sometimes you choose words from books, newspapers, letters to tell your own story and create a new thought while sometimes you seek to preserve the original thought but in your own way (creative summarizing if you will.) The words remain in the same order you found them but with giant gaps and chunks removed in between. I've read a few historical fiction novels in verse that were created this way, using a person's letters, journals and more to authentically tell their own story in a poetically abbreviated way.

Then there are black-out poems, created by blacking out (!) all but a few words from the page in a book or a news article or something, leaving behind a poem.

Here's one I created out of the recent Alexandria Times:

The show's the thing

never a string
of fate
not a brief experience
foreshadowed and boasting
neither a prerequisite
for frequent choice~
Instead the missing treasure,
full potential from within
Imagine the potential
Imagine

I'll admit, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it sounds poetic, yes? (It's a bit harder than you might think, making meaning within the parameters of someone else's pre-composed words.)

And then there are the book spine poems. Using the titles of books you create a stacked and visual representation of your poem. Again, a bit harder than it sounds seeing as you are confined to a lack of conjunctions and connections to help create full sentences and aid in flow. But here's one I threw together today at work.

I'm...

waiting for normal

before I fall

inside out and back again

except~if

the sky is everywhere,

so be it!

What is your favorite form of poetry? Are you a fan of diamante and shape poems, haiku or limericks? Or do you prefer free verse with no real rules or limitations?