ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the variations in poem, prose poem and shaped poem. Some of the variations In the Classroom: choose a section from a magazine column that gives advice and turn it into a found poem, write a response piece as to the formal decisions the student has made about elements such as line and stanza, read a primary source document of American history- a diary, a polemic, a first-hand account of an event, a testimony. Shaped poems gravitate to either geometric forms- cross, triangle, diamond or imitations of made things- cars, escalators, buildings. Some shaped poems, however, create organic shapes on the page. The prose poem and the found poem are hybrids as they traffic with the world of prose. The shaped poem, on the other hand, is a hyper-poem. The shaped poem is a novelty but that does not mean it is a triviality.
