THE 19TH CENTURY

 

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN AND OUR FOUND POEMS

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. Regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, it is also lauded as an excellent work of horror fiction. The students in the group read this story, analysed it in class and finally and in teams, CREATED three wonderful FOUND POEMS.  

WHAT IS A FOUND POEM?? They are poems which take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage!

POEM 1

This is the last day, but it is enough

No person touches this paper but me

I want to astonish him

Now, why should that man have fainted?

POEM 2

Self-control he said,

don't write, only rest.

This paper looks to me

Why should that man have fainted? But he did.

POEM 3

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate

a haunted house, too much fate.

He does not believe me, I'm sick.

What can one do?

A slight hysterical tendency,

what is one to do?

He hates to have me write a word

But I find I get pretty tired when I try.

This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern

in a different shade.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

Life is very much more exciting now than

it used to be.

I've pulled off most of the paper, so you

can't put me back!