Found Poetry in Romeo and Juliet

In my classroom we've been studying Romeo and Juliet. Students created "found poems" (poems made of language found in another text, this one being Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) from the lines of one particular character in order to examine what the language might reveal about that character. The result was a number of beautifully crafted, poignant, found poems about fate, love, death and revenge in the tragic play.

Here are some examples...


A Most Courteous Exposition
by Angelica Jaffe

Show me a mistress that is passing fair
And I'll still stay, to have thee still forget
Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast
Being but heavy, I will bear the light

Can I go forward when my heart is here?
With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls
Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat
To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath

Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair
And hire post horses I will hence tonight
Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love
Doth much excuse the appertaining rage

Did my heart love til now, forswear it sight
She will not say the siege of loving terms
But to rejoice in splendor of my own




A Vial For Romeo
by Alaina Bonilla

Is the day so young?
Shut up in prison, kept without food,
And these, who often drowned, could never die,
So stakes me to the ground, I cannot move,
Under love's heavy burden do I sink
This holy shrine the gentle sin is this
He jests at scars that never felt a wound
O, I am fortune's fool!
How well my comfort is revived by this
More light and light, more dark and dark our woes
I will omit no opportunity
For sweet discourses in our times to come
A grave? O, no, a lantern, slaughtered youth
To think it was so? O, give me thy hand
I'll bury thee in a triumphant grave.



Rise and Stand
by Chloe Briggs

My mistress is the sweetest lady.
And a good lady, and a wise, and virtuous,
Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.
Not the flower of courtesy but as gentle as a lamb
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old
To catch my breath with jouncing up and down
I am drudge and toil with your delight,
You shall bear the burden soon at night.
Never was seen so black a day as this,
Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye,
So stand up, stand up! Stand and be a man!
For her sake rise and stand.



My Beloved Romeo
by Hagaar Abou Areda

My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.
Tybalt is dead, and Romeo banned?
Hath Romeo slain himself, is that what you said?
Is Romeo slaughtered, and is Tybalt dead?
Ah, por my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name.
My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain.
If he be slain, say "Ay," or if not No
That runaways' eyes may wink, on my Romeo
My only love sprung from my only hate
To early seen unknown and known too late
All slain, all dead.
He made you for a highway to my bed
All in gore blood. I swooned at the sight.
And therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light
O find him! Give this ring to my true knight.



Juliet's Terror
by Jonathan Oemus

O serpent heart, hid with a flow'ring face
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
What storm is this that blows so contrary?
My dearest cousin, my dearest lord
Then dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom
Beautiful tyrant
Fiend angelical
Dove feathered raven
Despised substance of divine show
When thou didst power the spirit of a fiend
A damned saint, an honorable villain.
Was ever book containing such vile matter
Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Yea, noise, I'll be brief. O happy dagger
This is thy sheath; there rust and let me die.