Poe-Found

With June's prompt, we wanted to do something we hadn't done in a while. So when Judey suggested we do a Found Poem Challenge for this month, we were like, "Okay, yeah, that sounds great." We promptly forgot all the other ideas for challenges and set about ironing out any details that needed their wrinkles flattened.

For any of you who do not know what a found poem is, it is a form of poetry that borrows words or phrases from another source and restructures them in a poetic format. For more details, follow the link below. ⤵ ⤵ ⤵

ViMs June Prompt Instructions:

• Write a poem that includes words or phrases from Edgar A. Poe's The Sleeper.
• Minimum 200-word poem.
• The words you use need to appear in the poem in BOLD. They don't need to be beside each other.
• Link this article in an A/N in your piece
• Submit to Poet Community
• Post a link to your poem in the comments of this article.
• * EDIT -- I shouldn't have to say this, but absolutely NO AI allowed!!

Important Challenge Dates

• June 5, 2025, - June 25, 2025 = Entries Open
• June 26, 2025 - July 3, 2025 = Voting on Entries

Prizes

• First Place = $5
• Second Place = $2
• Third Place - $1

🐦‍⬛

For a little inspiration, to get you all going, I've listed Poe's poem below.

The Sleeper

By Edgar Allan Poe

At midnight, in the month of June,

I stand beneath the mystic moon.

An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,

Exhales from out her golden rim,

And softly dripping, drop by drop,

Upon the quiet mountain top,

Steals drowsily and musically

Into the universal valley.

The rosemary nods upon the grave;

The lily lolls upon the wave;

Wrapping the fog about its breast,

The ruin moulders into rest;

Looking like Lethe, see! the lake

A conscious slumber seems to take,

And would not, for the world, awake.

All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies

Irene, with her Destinies!

*

Oh, lady bright! can it be right—

This window open to the night?

The wanton airs, from the tree-top,

Laughingly through the lattice drop—

The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,

Flit through thy chamber in and out,

And wave the curtain canopy

So fitfully—so fearfully—

Above the closed and fringéd lid

’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,

That, o’er the floor and down the wall,

Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!

Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?

Why and what art thou dreaming here?

Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,

A wonder to these garden trees!

Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!

Strange, above all, thy length of tress,

And this all solemn silentness!

*

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

Which is enduring, so be deep!

Heaven have her in its sacred keep!

This chamber changed for one more holy,

This bed for one more melancholy,

I pray to God that she may lie

Forever with unopened eye,

While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

*

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,

As it is lasting, so be deep!

Soft may the worms about her creep!

Far in the forest, dim and old,

For her may some tall vault unfold—

Some vault that oft hath flung its black

And wingéd pannels fluttering back,

Triumphant, o’er the crested palls

Of her grand family funerals—

*

Some sepulchre, remote, alone,

Against whose portals she hath thrown,

In childhood, many an idle stone—

Some tomb from out whose sounding door

She ne’er shall force an echo more,

Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!

It was the dead who groaned within.