Found Poetry of the Vintage Scrapbook
Report
Death presses upon different
portions considered
her people
I may have mentioned that I collect vintage scrapbooks: recipe scrapbooks, collections of clippings from newspapers, crochet/lace patterns and one with the actual lace samples sewn onto blank pages. My scrapbooks are from the late 1800s and early 1900s, most are contained in repurposed books, their creators pasting recipes, articles and pictures, like the one above, over the existing text. This makes for some wild juxtapositions. There are many unintentional collages and a lot of found poetry. This scrapbook, filled entirely with crocheted lace patterns, pictures of finished tatting, and some household tips, has to be my favorite. My poem 'Scrapbook of the Anonymous Lacemaker' which appears in my collection Split the Crow is based on this scrapbook. On one page the 'anonymous lacemaker' pastes newspaper clippings for how to make ice cream and the dangers of unintentional poisoning side by side! The book she repurposes is a report of marriages, births and deaths for Vermont in 1861, so there's a lot of darkness, in the form of diseases and causes of death (drowning, scalding, railroad accidents) lurking behind her cheerily titled lace patterns. The found poetry that results from the juxtaposition seems almost intentional. I performed a little photoshop erasure on some of these, others are in their original state.
No. 2
Tatted Collars
Aggregate....................................... Male.
Star Doily
Inherits the whole property, instead of simply a lifein-
case
rare
the kindness
of nullity,
Antique Lace
deaths to the entire male population of the United States
Death
exhibiting the number
alphabetically), and
dying in each month
will be found a
class of diseases,
the ratio which
causes, bears
Cause
1. Of The
2. Of The
3. Of The
4. Of The
5. Of The
6. Of The
of Locomotion
Marks
the records of mortality have a
land for elucidating the
interior,
the New
conclusions
shall point to
longevity. * * *
work of time and
more and more
what imperfect
little
length of human
the
made
is source
adopted
preserved
preliminary
of
Be-