Found things

As I revealed in a previous posting, I have a passionate interest in found things of all kinds, and the artistic and poetic potentialities there can be in accidents.

One of the sites I look at habitually, at least since Michael Leddy turned me on to it, is Found Magazine, which catalogues found objects, especially notes and photographs. I came across this one recently, and it struck me immediately how similar it is to a well-known poem by William Carlos Williams, who in turn was attempting to capture the unwitting poetic resonance these kind of objects can posses. This is a nice circularity that I find very telling.


The poem, written in 1934:

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