Assumptions Test
Found poetry for April 2, 2022 National Poetry Month Poetry Challenge
The Hidden Brain “Putting Our Assumptions to the Test” Podcast Summary read: “Do you ever stop to wonder if the way you see the world is how the world really is? Economist Abhijit Banerjee has spent a lifetime asking himself this question. His answer: Our world views often don’t reflect reality. The only way to get more accurate is to think like a scientist — even when you’re not looking through a microscope.”
This is a series of haikus from the transcript. Haikus are a poetic form of Japanese origin that has three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. There are sites which have haiku counters to help poets form the poem with exactly the right number of syllables. These poems are also known as found poems where all the words in the poem are in the transcript, but they have been pulled out of context and fitted together to make a poem. Sometimes this is referred to as recycling words where the poet takes the words that are still useful and discard the rest.
Make Sense of the World
do dramatic great
launch a kite best in awe of
poorer mate expert
A Strange Emotion
Finn moment wisdom
clear interest another
world out there lived way
Making Sense of Experience, a Persona Poem
This shouldn’t be happening
I said to myself as my kite flew
up into the sky
I am rich
can afford a field, a bluff, a cliff without trees,
buildings,
all the things that catch a kite
Experience on the other hand
teaching me money can’t buy
experience,
skill,
wisdom
All those available to
the rich and the poor alike
―Found poems / blackout poetry / erasure haikus by Kimberly Burnham from Hidden Brain podcast https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/putting-our-assumptions-to-the-test/ from an interview between Shankar Vedantam and Abhijit Banerjee
