Found Poem

Let's start with part of a manifesto, then a poem, written by Andre Breton:

Surrealist methods would, moreover, demand to be heard. Everything is valid when it comes to obtaining the desired suddenness from certain associations. The pieces of paper that Picasso and Braque insert into their work have the same value as the introduction of a platitude into a literary analysis of the most rigorous sort. It is even permissible to entitle POEM what we get from the most random assemblage possible (observe, if you will, the syntax) of headlines and scraps of headlines cut out of the newspapers:

Now examine another "found poem," a famous one by William Carlos Williams. Imagine the circumstances that produced it.

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

What happens if we take what we imagine about the making of Williams' poem and link it to the following comments by composer John Cage?

[M]ore and more in my performances, I try to bring about a situation in which there is no difference between the audience and the performers. And I'm not speaking of audience participation in something designed by the composer, but rather I am speaking of the music that arises through the activity of both performers and the so-called audience. This is a difficult thing to bring about, and I've made only a few attempts so far and with mixed results, you might say. I think the most enjoyable from my point of view was last fall at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee when I was asked to give a demonstration of sounds of the environment. And about three hndred people came into a concert hall, and I spoke to them much as I am speaking to you now about the enjoyment of sounds of the enviornment. And then, through I Ching change operations we subjected a map of the university campus to those operations and made an itinerary for the entire audience which would take about forty-five minutes to an hour. And then all of us, as quietly as possible, and listening as attentively as possible, moved through the university community. It was a social experience. (Hans G. Helms interview with John Cage, 1972. Qtd.1991:111)

How might we turn the making of poetry into a social--instead of a private--experience? Come up with a experiment that you could conduct with our class, an experiment that would produce a poem.