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Mornings Like This: Found Poems – Witty, Moving Poetry from Van Gogh's Letters and Old Books by Beloved Author Annie Dillard
"Found poems are to their poet what no-fault insurance is to payoffs waiting to happen where everyone wins and no one is blamed. Dillard culls about 40 such happy accidents from sources as diverse as a The American Boys Handy Book (1882) and the letters of Van Gogh. . . . the poet aims for a lucky, loaded symbolism that catapults the reader into an epiphany never imagined by the original authors." — Publishers Weekly In Mornings Like This, beloved author Annie Dillard has given us a witty and moving collection of poems in a wholly original form, sure to charm her fans, both old and new. Extracting and rearranging sentences from old and odd books—From D.C. Beard's "The American Boys Handy Book" in 1882 to Van Gogh's letters to David Greyson's "The Countryman's Year" in 1936—Dillard has composed poems on poetry’s most heartfelt themes of love, nature, nostalgia, and death. A unique, clever, and original collection, Dillard’s characteristic voice sounds throughout the pages.
- GenresPoetryNonfictionNature
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Annie Dillard
62 books2,856 followersAnnie Dillard (born April 30, 1945) is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Dillard taught for 21 years in the English department of Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
March 29, 2018
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of found poetry:
A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet. -definition from poets.org
So you open any book, or a newspaper article, and find language you think is interesting, and “cut out” all the language that isn’t to you a poem, or you conversely take the words you like and make a poem out of them. My idea is that you don’t typically choose something already beautifully written—that in a way would be too easy—but find nuggets of beauty in something surprising. As if “This is just to say” by William Carlos Williams were actually a note of apology on a refrigerator and shaped into a poem by Williams. I know a poet who created a book of found poems out of a boring biography of WWII general. I guess the basic idea is that much poetry works with constraints, and the constraint of the found poem is that it has to be from a single source.
Annie Dillard is best known as an essayist (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), but she was also a poet, and this is one of her collections of poetry. Of found poems, she writes in the intro:
“Happy poets who write found poetry go pawing through popular culture like sculptors on trash heaps. They hold and wave aloft usable artifacts and fragments: jingles and ad copy, menus and broadcasts — all objet trouvés, the literary equivalents of Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans and Duchamp’s bicycle. By entering a found text as a poem, the poet doubles its context. The original meaning remains intact, but now it swings between two poles. The poet adds, or at any rate increases, the element of delight. This is an urban, youthful, ironic, cruising kind of poetry. It serves up whole texts, or interrupted fragments of texts.”
Not many of these are fantastic poems, any of them, but the idea is intriguing, yes? Dillard culls about 40 such happy accidents from sources as diverse as a The American Boys Handy Book (1882) and the letters of Van Gogh. My favorite one does sort of cheat in a way, in using the great language in these letters:
I Am Trying to Get at Something Utterly Heart-Broken
— V. VAN GOGH, LETTERS, 1873-1890, ED. I. STONE, TRANS. JOHANNA VAN GOGH
At the end of the road is a small cottage,
And over all the blue sky.
I am trying to get at something utterly heart-broken.
The flying birds, the smoking chimneys,
And that figure loitering below in the yard–
If we do not learn from this, then from what shall we learn?
The miners go home in the white snow at twilight
These people are quite black. Their houses are small.
The time for making dark studies is short.
A patch of brown heath through which a white
Path leads, and sky just delicately tinged,
Yet somewhat passionately brushed.
We who try our best to live, why do we not live more?
II
The branches of poplars and willows rigid like wire.
It may be true that there is no God here,
But there must be one not far off.
A studio with a cradle, a baby’s high chair.
Those colors which have no name
Are the real foundation of everything.
What I want is more beautiful huts far away on the heath.
If we are tired, isn’t it then because
We have already walked a long way?
The cart with the white horse brings
a wounded man home from the mines.
Bistre and bitumen, well applied,
Make the colouring ripe and mellow and generous.
III
A ploughed field with clods of violet earth;
Over all a yellow sky with a yellow sun.
So there is every moment something that moves one intensely.
A bluish-grey line of trees with a few roofs.
I simply could not restrain myself or keep
My hands off it or allow myself to rest.
A mother with her child, in the shadow
Of a large tree against the dune.
To say how many green-greys there are is impossible.
I love so much, so very much, the effect
Of yellow leaves against green trunks.
This is not a thing that I have sought,
But has come across my path and I have seized it.
A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet. -definition from poets.org
So you open any book, or a newspaper article, and find language you think is interesting, and “cut out” all the language that isn’t to you a poem, or you conversely take the words you like and make a poem out of them. My idea is that you don’t typically choose something already beautifully written—that in a way would be too easy—but find nuggets of beauty in something surprising. As if “This is just to say” by William Carlos Williams were actually a note of apology on a refrigerator and shaped into a poem by Williams. I know a poet who created a book of found poems out of a boring biography of WWII general. I guess the basic idea is that much poetry works with constraints, and the constraint of the found poem is that it has to be from a single source.
Annie Dillard is best known as an essayist (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), but she was also a poet, and this is one of her collections of poetry. Of found poems, she writes in the intro:
“Happy poets who write found poetry go pawing through popular culture like sculptors on trash heaps. They hold and wave aloft usable artifacts and fragments: jingles and ad copy, menus and broadcasts — all objet trouvés, the literary equivalents of Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans and Duchamp’s bicycle. By entering a found text as a poem, the poet doubles its context. The original meaning remains intact, but now it swings between two poles. The poet adds, or at any rate increases, the element of delight. This is an urban, youthful, ironic, cruising kind of poetry. It serves up whole texts, or interrupted fragments of texts.”
Not many of these are fantastic poems, any of them, but the idea is intriguing, yes? Dillard culls about 40 such happy accidents from sources as diverse as a The American Boys Handy Book (1882) and the letters of Van Gogh. My favorite one does sort of cheat in a way, in using the great language in these letters:
I Am Trying to Get at Something Utterly Heart-Broken
— V. VAN GOGH, LETTERS, 1873-1890, ED. I. STONE, TRANS. JOHANNA VAN GOGH
At the end of the road is a small cottage,
And over all the blue sky.
I am trying to get at something utterly heart-broken.
The flying birds, the smoking chimneys,
And that figure loitering below in the yard–
If we do not learn from this, then from what shall we learn?
The miners go home in the white snow at twilight
These people are quite black. Their houses are small.
The time for making dark studies is short.
A patch of brown heath through which a white
Path leads, and sky just delicately tinged,
Yet somewhat passionately brushed.
We who try our best to live, why do we not live more?
II
The branches of poplars and willows rigid like wire.
It may be true that there is no God here,
But there must be one not far off.
A studio with a cradle, a baby’s high chair.
Those colors which have no name
Are the real foundation of everything.
What I want is more beautiful huts far away on the heath.
If we are tired, isn’t it then because
We have already walked a long way?
The cart with the white horse brings
a wounded man home from the mines.
Bistre and bitumen, well applied,
Make the colouring ripe and mellow and generous.
III
A ploughed field with clods of violet earth;
Over all a yellow sky with a yellow sun.
So there is every moment something that moves one intensely.
A bluish-grey line of trees with a few roofs.
I simply could not restrain myself or keep
My hands off it or allow myself to rest.
A mother with her child, in the shadow
Of a large tree against the dune.
To say how many green-greys there are is impossible.
I love so much, so very much, the effect
Of yellow leaves against green trunks.
This is not a thing that I have sought,
But has come across my path and I have seized it.
March 12, 2023
I like Annie Dillard's writing and I'm interested in found poetry, so I was predisposed to like this book, but, instead, found it somewhat disappointing. There were only a few poems where I experienced the alchemical transformation of a prosaic text into something new, as I'd expected or hoped for. Most either tweaked language that was already poetic in the original or never came any more alive in the new form than the old.
July 22, 2017
these are, i have no doubt, good and great poems, i'm just not smart enough to understand them.
April 25, 2018
I should know better. Even Annie Dillard cannot entice me to enjoy poetry, though her own rather than "found" poetry might have been more successful. I simply do not have the patience necessary to properly appreciate its emotive style.
February 22, 2024
Found poems are collections of phrases that someone, in this case Annie Dillard, finds interesting or amusing or well put together. I can understand the delight in finding poetry in a lab manual or a history book, but I kept remembering that Annie Dillard didn't write these words herself, and so some of the charm was lost.
May 6, 2016
The novelty of the found poems (Dillard holds herself to a rigid standard in her composition) and the sheer breadth of her sources (from Vincent Van Gogh's letters to old medical tracts to Boys' Handbooks) make these poems interesting. As far as standing alone on poetic merits, the poems on painting were probably the strongest.
"The mind works in infinite spaces -- yet haphazardly, spreading." ~ Annie Dillard / Mikhail Prishvin
"I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken." ~ Annie Dillard / Vincent Van Gogh
March 6, 2008
Blame this slim volume of Annie Dillard's, in which each poem is made up of repurposed lines from an offbeat out-of-print-er (an old collection of travel essays, a guide to the meaning of semaphore flags), for my own addiction to "finding" poetry. My favorite here: her uncannily cohesive, resonant "Index of First Lines."
August 30, 2018
I love Annie Dillard. This doesn’t dull my enthusiasm in the least, but this one wasn’t for me. I’ve only read her non-fiction previously, so this book of “found poems” was quite a departure. And, while I could still sense Annie in there, it didn’t hit me in the guts (with the exception of “An Acquaintance in the Heavens”) quite like her others. I still love you, Annie!
July 7, 2011
This isn't my favorite collection ever, but it is intriguing. Strangely, I think the title poem is probably my favorite in the book, which ends with the lines "Give me enough time in this place / And I will surely make a beautiful thing." love that.
September 28, 2012
These are found poems, compiled by Annie Dillard but not written by her. They are excerpts from prose translations, letters, instructions....with vivid language, reconstructed in poetry forms. She subtracted words but did not add any.
April 25, 2025
I'm a fan of 'found poems', those written from lines of other text. They can be fun and creative and completely rewrite the subject of the original text, giving it new meanings and imaginings.
But a whole book of 'found poems'?
Overbearing.
Dillard is not necessarily known for her poetic skills and it shows in the majority of these poems, most of them 'found' in various textbooks and other non-fiction works. She manages to pull off three decent poems, not enough for me to keep her book on my shelves.
The biggest problem with 'found poetry' is it's not just the act of taking other lines from other authors or texts and then putting them on the page to make them look like a poem (that's what it feels like in this collection). A good 'found poem' will see something undiscovered in the nuance of the words in another's writing, will rearrange those lines, manipulate them into a sharper meaning, while still holding some semblance of the original sense of the text in which it was drawn from.
But a whole book of 'found poems'?
Overbearing.
Dillard is not necessarily known for her poetic skills and it shows in the majority of these poems, most of them 'found' in various textbooks and other non-fiction works. She manages to pull off three decent poems, not enough for me to keep her book on my shelves.
The biggest problem with 'found poetry' is it's not just the act of taking other lines from other authors or texts and then putting them on the page to make them look like a poem (that's what it feels like in this collection). A good 'found poem' will see something undiscovered in the nuance of the words in another's writing, will rearrange those lines, manipulate them into a sharper meaning, while still holding some semblance of the original sense of the text in which it was drawn from.
May 19, 2020
"Half the poems seek to serve poetry's oldest and most sincere aims with one of its newest and most ironic methods, to dig deep with a shallow tool. The other half are just jokes."
So the author (the extreme editor?). But the intense restraint it took to not add a punchy twist or end of her own is too much for the poems as poems, says this reader. They don't have the kick of a poem written to be a poem by a poet, and as jokes they aren't funny. The most that can be said for them is that they might train us in finding beauties, expected or otherwise, in other books.
We have come to expect better from Annie Dillard.
So the author (the extreme editor?). But the intense restraint it took to not add a punchy twist or end of her own is too much for the poems as poems, says this reader. They don't have the kick of a poem written to be a poem by a poet, and as jokes they aren't funny. The most that can be said for them is that they might train us in finding beauties, expected or otherwise, in other books.
We have come to expect better from Annie Dillard.
February 8, 2021
I was curious to see how poetry could be found in prose as diverse as the personal letters of Van Gogh and old medical manuals. I think my favourite poem was a poem constructed from the first lines found in a poetry anthology.
However, while some were brilliant and/or entertaining, some had me wondering what made them a poem. How did the poet know they were poems, as opposed to prose simply rearranged with new line breaks?
However, while some were brilliant and/or entertaining, some had me wondering what made them a poem. How did the poet know they were poems, as opposed to prose simply rearranged with new line breaks?
November 6, 2020
Twice in the past, I approached an Annie Dillard book with high expectations, only to be disappointed. I simply did not enjoy her prose as much as I expected to. But with this book, I had the opposite experience -- I'm not a huge fan of poetry, but the idea of rearranging phrases from existing books intrigued me enough to give it a try, and I'm vert glad I did!
August 10, 2021
I've learned a new discipline of poetry, Found Poems, and am excited at the prospect of new inspirations. At the same time I have been entertained, again, by the brilliant Annie Dillard. She can take either a Boy Scout Handbook, an obscure rendition of renaissance climatology, or book of 19th century philosophy, and produce poetry that challenges and/or inspires. Loved this!
January 25, 2023
I looked for this book because of an excerpt in Georgia Heard's Writing Toward Home. The concept of found poetry is an exciting one, but the poems in Mornings Like This did not elicit that response. I respect Annie Dillard and her work. The poems in this book were probably over my head. Only a few lines resonated; the rest were forgettable.
April 30, 2023
I love the concept of this writers work. How she plays with form and genre.
this book of "found poem" - she takes words, lines and phrases from other pieces of witing to make the poems - not adding any of her own words.
Like some of her other work the idea is much more exciting to me than the outcome
this book of "found poem" - she takes words, lines and phrases from other pieces of witing to make the poems - not adding any of her own words.
Like some of her other work the idea is much more exciting to me than the outcome
May 25, 2023
yknow, i liked it! it’s rare to find something with exactly the right amount of whimsy. nothing really made me stop, but i could feel the sense of fun. dillard says “the poet adds, or at any rate increases, the element of delight.” yes! i was scared of this one because i did not like a previous unnamed book of hers, but i think i’ll stick with her poems.
June 8, 2021
While I most enjoy Dillard as an essayist, I was still intrigued with this collection of “found” poems. It reveals both the odd breadth and diversity of Dillard’s reading as well as her gift for original observation, a rather sly sense of humor, and her ear for a good turn of phrase.
November 8, 2025
This was great. Some of the poems were very funny. Those were my favorites. It took a little time to get used to the fact that these were found poems, words not written by the author. But it doesn’t take long to get past that. Wonderful collection.
October 4, 2017
"Pools in old woods, full of leaves.
Give me time enough in this place
And I will surely make a beautiful thing."
Give me time enough in this place
And I will surely make a beautiful thing."
December 4, 2019
Found poems shaped from the broken text of unusual sources. Dillard's choices are curious, and sometimes hilarious.
July 9, 2021
Poems created from line out of books. Many were may better than I expected. Some, not so much.
August 14, 2021
Some of the poems were great and some were so-so, but a fun concept.
February 17, 2025
Not my style of poetry
August 18, 2025
I love found poetry in general, found a few gems in this collection. Loved this line:
Take up mental hygiene;
Because it is much needed now.
Take up mental hygiene;
Because it is much needed now.
February 14, 2024
Annie! Some of these were so strong it was almost inconceivable to me that they were found poems. The rest, her author's note about them being a joke let me in on it. Overall, a complete delight.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews