Found Poem from Film -- Beasts of the Southern Wild

This past weekend I watched the film Beasts of the Southern Wild, and decided beforehand to collect quotes from the movie to create a found poem.  Not exactly an original idea, but a good one when watching a film at home.

Here's the process I used, which includes a certain amount of randomness.  There are no rules, so being purposeful about the found poem, or adding in any of your own words is perfectly acceptable.  I decided to combine the "foundness" with what is called Dada poetry -- random pick and order.

Step One: While watching the film, write down quotes that stand out.  Looks like this:

Step Two: Take the pages you wrote on and make strips:

Step Three: Randomly pick and write down your poem. This is the way mine turned out:

 Never Run (1)

We got the prettiest place on earth.
The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right.
Everything is part of the buffet of the universe.

They built the wall that cuts us off.
You gotta fix what you can.
I see that I'm a little piece of a big big universe and that makes everything right.

C'mon, get in the boat.
Better learn how to survive now.
Brave men don't run from their home.

I've broken everything.
Everything is starting to die.
Everything beautiful is gone.

She swam away
You're my friend, kind of.
Sometimes they be talking in codes.

The brave stay. They don't run.
*

Step Four:  Decide if you like the way it came together. Make any shifts you'd like to make, adding words, deleting lines, whatever works.

My analysis:  I liked the way it came together until the last three line verse...it didn't seem to work...so here it is with that section removed:


 Never Run (2)

We got the prettiest place on earth.
The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right.
Everything is part of the buffet of the universe.

They built the wall that cuts us off.
You gotta fix what you can.
I see that I'm a little piece of a big big universe and that makes everything right.

C'mon, get in the boat.
Better learn how to survive now.
Brave men don't run from their home.

I've broken everything.
Everything is starting to die.
Everything beautiful is gone.

The brave stay. They don't run.
*
Second analysis:  I think that the "she swam away" line still needs to be part of this.  How to make that fit?

 Never Run (3)

We got the prettiest place on earth.
The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right.
Everything is part of the buffet of the universe.

They built the wall that cuts us off.
You gotta fix what you can.
I see that I'm a little piece of a big big universe and that makes everything right.

C'mon, get in the boat.
Better learn how to survive now.
Brave men don't run from their home.

I've broken everything.
Everything is starting to die.
Everything beautiful is gone.

She swam away.
The brave stay.
They don't run.
*
 I decided that instead of a final line, I would stay with the three line format, but with shorter sentences for impact.  "She swam away" fit in perfectly that way.

If you have seen the movie, you may feel like I do -- that this little poem encapsulates fairly well the theme of the film, and the plot as well. 

Just another way of making art from art!

Acknowledgement: The screenplay was written by Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin.