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Kleptopoem

Genre
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poem built by 'stealing' lines or phrases from other texts and recombining them into a new work (a form of found poetry).

Detailed Definition
A kleptopoem is a poetic work that deliberately appropriates, recontextualizes, or remixes existing texts—such as advertisements, legal documents, news reports, or canonical literature—to critique, subvert, or reanimate source material through collage, erasure, or détournement; rooted in avant-garde practices like Dada and Situationist theory, this form challenges notions of originality and authorship, exemplified by Tom Phillips’s “A Humument” (an erasure of a Victorian novel), or by contemporary poets like Jenny Boully or Matthew Rohrer, who use found language to expose hidden ideologies or create new lyrical possibilities from textual detritus.
Example
Example in poetry:
Kleptopoem: Found poem from newspaper headlines; “Collage of overheard bus conversations” (appropriation); “Erasure poem from legal text” (transformative); “Kleptopoem: theft as homage” (conceptual)
Additional Notes
Poem appropriating extensively from other sources. Controversial practice. Related to found poetry, cento. Study tip: Investigate sources; consider transformation versus theft; attribution matters.
Also Known As
found poem cento variant
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