This is the first major anthology of found poetry and includes work by 54 contributors from throughout the United States. The poems in this book look at how we might use words not originally meant to be a poem and turn them into one. The underlying principle of this unique collection is that poetry can be found in ordinary language – even in language that at first seems to struggle against any semblance of the imaginative voice – and thereby affirms the aesthetic possibilities of all words no matter where they originally appear.

The sources of “found poems” in this anthology include textbooks, literary and scientific monographs, essays, newspaper and magazine articles, letters, emails, advertisements, speeches, and many other non-creative publications. They all reveal the joy of the discovery of the transformative aesthetic elements in everyday language and prove that poetry not only resides everywhere around us but is an essential part of our daily lives. This is an interesting and engaging book, fun to read, and an important statement about the very nature of poetic language.