For this week’s blog post, you will create an erasure poem.  You may start with any text–another poem, an official document, a page of a textbook, an article from the newspaper, a cereal box, a book jacket, a brochure from the dentist. For this assignment, use a physical, material version of the text you choose (rather than an electronic one), and do your ‘erasing’ by hand. In crafting your erasure, keep in mind that there are many techniques for blocking out words.

Your poem–the final poem–might draw out, sharpen, or clarify the meaning of the original text. Or it might ironize or complicate that meaning. It can consist of very few words, or a substantial number. There are no requirements, here, beyond perhaps the suggestion that your poem should “move in a lyrical way” (to borrow a phrase from the poet Donika Kelly).

ON THE BLOG: post a photo of the finished product and a photo of the original, unaltered text.  Let us know the name / source of the original text, if that’s not clear from the image. Don’t write anything else. Due Friday by 9 pm. 

IN THE COMMENTS: Choose an erasure poem by one of your classmates. Write a 200+ word analysis of the new poem. You should consider its sound and structure and other formal elements, its relation to the original text, and its visual appearance. Note: while praise is always welcome–poets love it–that is not the point, here. Your task is to analyze the erasure poem; to figure out how and why it works, and communicate your findings to the reader. Treat it with rigor. Due Monday by 9 pm.