Presenting data as a found poem journal entry

Presenting data as a found poem

7/10/13

A stiff apology is a second insult…the injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

G. K. Chesterton

            I am now not sure how I came across this transcript, it was simply luck of the Google sort; I did not deliberately set out to find this particular interview. The transcripts I read prior to this one were interviews with blowhards, or whiners or worst of all, bores. I was beginning to think I would end up with some turgid mess for a poem. This one was so clearly meant to be read as prose. I personally wrote nothing and every word came straight from the transcript. I edited sentences but did not add or delete. I did rearrange the order of the sentences in the transcript where necessary to manage the flow and suit my purpose.

I read for themes and pulled out what worked for my poem. There were other themes present but I chose to limit my focus rather than try to incorporate everything. Stretching my poem to include them would have detracted from the design. I had a destination in mind and only used what I needed to get there. I hope I preserved the texture of the interview and managed to bring the reader’s attention to what particularly caught my attention without distorting or altering the meaning. My husband read it and said, "Wow, I had no idea you could write poetry". Much as I would have liked to preen, really, Lance was the poet and Oprah his muse. I simply made use of the ‘lens’ and aimed. If he thought it was well done, I must have selected the phrases that best zoomed in on the chosen theme.

I found it surprisingly satisfying to complete this assignment; I was initially leery. I felt that the exercise helped to sharpen my ability to identify themes by requiring me to bring real focus to my reading. I read with a purpose and when I found what I sought, I ruthlessly ignored everything else. If I were not limiting myself to a single theme for a poem, I would have started again and ignored everything that spoke to my first theme…and continued until I identified each theme and all the supporting statements for each.

Note. From “education-portal.com, 2013, retrieved from http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/field-study-definition-research-quiz.html