“society of victimhood”

Katherine Ferguson

I used the answers that Donna Rotunno, Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer, gave during an interview with the New York Times. What I did to create my found poem was cut the sentences that were said into fragments and individual words. I did this to emphasize what I feel were the most important parts spoken during the interview. I also put spaces in between the words and fragments of the sentences. The spaces that I put reflected the pauses that I feel were necessary so that the important parts were all separately analyzed by the readers. I also decided to underline, bold, and change the color of the text for certain words.

As I was working on the poem, I feel like I was becoming angrier the more I would break down what the lawyer was saying regarding sexual assault. The Harvey Weinstein case alone frustrates me but the more I analyzed the interview the more angered I felt about how the lawyer spoke on her client in a positive way and the victims who were women in a negative way. What I had learned from this experience is that even though you are copying and pasting the words from another source there is still so much thought and time put into found poetry. I also learned that although there may not be many words the emotions you are trying to convey still come across strongly. It did help me think about Zong! in a different way because I feel like I can understand the process and language better since I have now done it. I also understand why Zong! took such a long time to complete as M. NourBeSe Philip has explained because this one page took me a longer time than I had expected.