Mind Reading Wrong
Found poetry for April 3, 2022 National Poetry Month Poetry Challenge
The teaser for the podcast reads: “Do you ever struggle to communicate with your mom? Or feel like you and your spouse sometimes speak different languages? In the final episode of our “Mind Reading 2.0” series, “Why Conversations Go Wrong” we bring back one of our favorite conversations, with linguist Deborah Tannen. She shows how our conversational styles can cause unintended conflicts, and what we can do to communicate more effectively with the people in our lives.”
These are poems, words culled from the transcript. Found poetry like these can be created from the pages of a book or from magazine articles or blogs. Found poetry is the art of seeing what is there right in front of you, like a sculpture carving away what is not necessary to the poem. This series of poems are being created as part of a found poetry challenge for the April 2022 National Poetry Month. Poets are challenged to write a poem everyday for a month.
Talking and Listening
communication
pace point rhythms intonation
patterns a minefield
how let people know
unthinking patterns express
cause pain learn listen
Misunderstanding
who’s on first real
life unthinking bewilder
confusion erupt
Introvert, a Persona Poem
Let me talk
listen I can’t push in
I can keep trying to express
a thought come to me
but lays still born in my mouth
―Found poems / blackout poetry / erasure haikus by Kimberly Burnham from Hidden Brain podcast https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/why-conversations-go-wrong/ from an interview between Shankar Vedantam and Deborah Tannen.
