Original: Excerpt from The Imaginative Argument A Practical Manifesto for Writers by Frank L. Cioffi (pages 24-25)
My Erasure Poem:
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In the excerpt you selected, Frank L. Cioffi addresses key aspects of forming a successful argumentative paper. He speaks to the importance of arguing something that you genuinely discovered and steering away from simply just discussing and explaining the subject matter. Furthermore, Cioffi stresses the importance of using creativity to express your own voice while only using your instructor’s ideas and ideas from external sources to build onto your position—as compared to focusing solely on the thoughts of your instructor or external sources. In your erasure poem, you do a great job of capturing Cioffi’s ideas into a few words. You highlight the stress that Cioffi places on the author’s creativity and ability to express their thoughts. Although Cioffi stresses focusing on your own thoughts and words, however, you used only his words to create this poem—as that is what the assignment entailed—which gives the piece an ironic twist. Your erasure poem serves almost as an extension of Cioffi’s writings, establishing a strong connection between your work and the original excerpt. Additionally, the visual appearance you dedicated to your erasure poem doesn’t only look amazing but also undoubtedly contributes to the meaning of your poem. You encompass the entire poem in a lightbulb that has a crack in it, from which pours out a rainbowish cloud. I interpreted the lightbulb as signifying contained ideas and creativity. Because the lightbulb has a crack, there appears to be an outflow of ideas and creativity, which is represented by the rainbowish cloud. This ties back into Cioffi’s emphasis on creativity and letting your own ideas “spill” into your writing. All in all, this was a great piece of work—artistically, stylistically, and analytically—and you successfully encapsulated Cioffi’s thoughts into an erasure poem.