Frank Bidart’s poem Adolescence, from his book DESIRE, is, he explains in a note, “a ‘found’ poem, carved out of anonymously-published prose.” Through deft strokes of punctuation and lineation Bidart, amazingly, transforms this found language entirely; it feels at home among the other poems in the book (well, that is if any of his poems can be said to be “at home”).

The poem’s layers of time and consciousness and looking mirror our experience as we read this poem knowing it’s been “found,” changed through being looked at by Bidart.

Find language and, using punctuation, erasure, lineation, and whatever other tools you want, make it into a poem of your own.

Adolescence

He stared up into my eyes with a look

I can almost see now.

He had that look in his eyes

that bore right into mine.

I could sense that he knew I was

envious of what he was doing–; and knew that I’d

always wish I had known at the time

what he was dong was something I’d always

crave in later life, just as he did.

He was enjoying what he was doing.

The looking was one of pure rapture.

He was gloating. He knew.

I still remember his look.