“In the Well”

We draw the Found in the Public Domain special series to a close with “In the Well” by Karen L. George, crafted from the words in Emily Dickinson’s poem 1400 [What mystery pervades a well].

About the poem and the process of creating it, Karen says:

“I’ve become addicted to writing found poems. It’s just one way to honor the poets whose work speaks to me—in this case Emily Dickinson, and so I also tried to use capitalization in the non-standard way she did. My process for writing found poems is to write words from the source on a separate paper, and scan those words, say them aloud, until I zero in on one word, then another, until images arise that I write on a blank page. When they begin to interact, I modify, rearrange and shape these images into a poem. I find writing found poems satisfying because they often lead me into places I might not have gone before.”

“Lip of the Well“—another of Karen’s Dickinson remixes—was published earlier in the series, and her ekphrastic poem “The Wait” appeared in Heron Tree volume 4.