Kimberlee Conway Ireton wrote this morning at Tweetspeak Poetry about Wave’s Erasure Poetry Page where they present a piece of writing. You take out words to create a poem. It’s kind of like the black-out poetry we did at Laity Lodge last fall.
Here’s the black-out poem I created then. You can’t read it well in that post.
See Deep
The window of words
influences life.
Books
a joy to be savored,
looking for something . . . something.
Eyes dance
in deep water.
Here are some erasure poems I tried today. If you click on the titles, you can see what the poem looked like in its erasure form. On the sidebar of that page, you can see the source text I used, read other poems, or write your own by clicking on “browse all texts.”
Go have some fun!
And nobody did anything for me
But God
always caring.
He is going to see me through
whatever happens.
With God
my spirit settled itself
and has been
with wings spread
hovering
out of the world.
It was a long time
since I had taken a walk out of doors,
and the fresh air revived me.
It was also pleasant to hear
a voice speaking to me,
a whisper.
I prayed till near dawn
to enter this hiding place,
and I gratefully accepted the best.
Focus of Light
She seems to feel it
as a kind of focus of light.
She is traveling alone
to see it, she says, for herself.
Such sights! Such visions!
She looks at everything
with her clear, quiet eyes
wide open,
pushing through brambles
without tearing her robe.
Exciting!
Knowing!
And always holding her course
stainless
fearless.
After all, if you can get
the right point of view,
there is something rather striking.
Sandra! Such fun to read the poems you made! I didn’t think to rewrite mine in poetic form (I feel a bit dopey about that :-} ). The form makes a big difference in how it reads. I’ll have to do that next time; I expect it will change what I erase.
Thanks for playing!
Thanks for the link, Kimberlee. Love playing with words.
Oh, Snady-girl! I love this. Too fun! Will have to try this. I love your snippets. Wonderful as always!
Thanks, Lynn. Do try! Caution: It’s addicting.
Sandy, I love, love, love that last one, Focus of Light!! Love the language, love the imagery, love the rhythm and texture of the words. So glad you posted these and the “how to.”
Isn’t it fun? And so many different poems could be birthed from the same text. And who says once we find words we like, we can’t mix them all up?
I had to go try it for myself — about to blog my result now…
thanks for the lead…
Yay. Can’t wait to read.
The concept of poetry by erasure is fascinating. You’ve come up with some wonderful poems! The closest I’ve come to anything like that is choosing a random selection of magnetic words and pushing them around on the board to find pleasing combinations.
I love my magnetic words kit. I took it when I spoke to the grand girl’s 4th grade class on poetry and let them “write” a couple poems. Grace and her friend created an awesome one, but I didn’t think to write it down before it got taken apart.
Beautiful poetry!