Found Poetry

Found poetry is, broadly, any kind of poetry found in a prior existing text that may or may not be a poem originally. I've grouped various approaches under this category; this is more of a meta-technique than a form in itself, a way of thinking about and interpreting text in the world.

Cut-Up Poetry

Cut-up is a text technique in which a piece of text is split into words, phrases, and/or sentences (historically, this involved literally cutting up the printed pages of the original text, hence the name), then reassembled to form a new text, often with a distinctly more surreal bent. The technique has been applied to many—probably all—forms of artistic text, including poetry.

Blackout Poetry

Blackout is a poetic technique in which a piece of text has words removed (e.g. overwritten in thick black lines, hence the name) to create a poem from the remaining words. The resulting poems are often essentially free verse, but with the strict constraint that all the words will be in whatever positions they were on the page in the original text, which strongly leads to the use of space and position for artistic expression.

Index Poems

This is a term that's highly Seaglass-specific, but could be applied elsewhere; a kind of found poetry in consecutive lines of the poem-index list on this notebook's index page (the lines may no longer be consecutive if I change how the list is ordered). One side-effect of this is that each index poem's entry in the index is a duplicate of another, previous poem's index entry.

I've used the words as-is, but changed punctuation to whatever I felt read better.

Poems

2025-12-22
```
the law
the cat
ruins
```
A short free verse index poem. Made with poems from the 22nd of September, 2025.
2025-12-22
```
moonlight reveals clouds;
moonlight
buried
```
A haiku-ish index poem. Made with poems from the 8th of August, 2025.
2025-12-22
```
days with no sun
at world's end—
vivisecting chill
in dark trees
```
A short free verse index poem. Made with poems from the 16th and 17th of December, 2025.
2025-12-22
```
a kite's shadow—
the storm has passed,
long summer stillness
```
A haiku index poem. Made with poems from the 24th and 30th of June, 2025.

2025-12-22

A dull band of cloud—
	rotten
	winter morning dew—
Salamanders heave-ho,
Dead languages their games

A free verse index poem. Made with poems from the 13th, 14th, and 16th of December, 2025.

2025-12-09
```
Lost leaves return.
Lost
	in black rivers,
				ghost leaves.
```
A little free verse index poem. Made with poems from the 8th of December, 2025.
2025-12-09
```
first of December:
dark Christmas lights
a pummelling rain
```
A haiku index poem. Made with poems from the 5th of December, 2025 (though the first line was written on the 1st).
2025-12-04
```
You won't learn anything new:
They're digging great holes in your mind.
```
A slightly-crooked free verse index poem that feels like it should have a strong meter, but doesn't. Made with poems from the 22nd of November, 2024, and the 14th of March, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
through ice water:
dewdrops,
some lost dignity
```
A Kelly lune-esque free verse index poem. Made with poems from the 26th and 27th of November, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
thick on the window,
the deluge
after the rainstorm
```
A Kelly lune index poem. Made with poems from the 22nd of November, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
the sky's last daydream:
sombre streetlights,
ink, and cotton
```
A surreal haiku index poem. Made with poems from the 1st of November, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
The end is nigh again:
Stone Words Walk
Black Star Bolt.
```
A free verse index poem. Made with poems from the 25th of January and 26th of September, 2023, and 14th of November, 2024.

2025-12-04

The burnt-out wreck—
The broken bridge—
The ancient light defiled!
Our dying sun still churns.

A blank verse index poem. Made with poems from the 25th of April, 2025.

2025-12-04
```
I freely walk
through beams of gold dust
omens
```
A vaguely haiku-esque free verse index poem. Made with poems from the 17th and 19th of July, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
dusty small sorrow;
decrepit bones,
their arts dying
```
A vaguely haiku-esque free verse index poem, but without much discipline (also, I changed the meaning of the list line somewhat by removing the apostrophe from “art's” in the original poem). Made with poems from the 12th and 13th of May, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
December night
beneath the blanket
weathering winter
```
A pretty simple haiku index poem, not that interesting except in that it came together so neatly in the index. One of the few straightforward haiku I've made via index poetry tonight. Made with poems from the 1st and 2nd of December, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
Concrete comes alive,
	tonight,
Riding cosmic highs
Nestled in the dusk.
```
A free verse index poem. Made with poems from the 16th and 18th of November, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
black rooftops;
a smudge of sun
on the pavement
```
A haiku index poem. One of the few straightforward haiku I've made via index poetry tonight. Made with poems from the 18th and 19th of November, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
beneath the bulwark
wind quakes on the trees,
unmet
```
A slightly-surreal haiku index poem. Made with poems from the 18th and 19th of April, 2025.
2025-12-04
```
all-day rain;
the silhouette
steadfast in the cold
```
A haiku index poem. One of the few straightforward haiku I've made via index poetry tonight. Made with poems from the 30th of November and 1st of December, 2025.
2025-10-11
Lenin was a mushroom
```
Lenin was a
televised hoax
impersonating the
illusion
of the
Soviet Union.

— Sensational Committee
```
A blackout-ish septolet based on the wiki page for the “Lenin was a mushroom” TV hoax (as read on the 11th of October, 2025).