Erasure
What is Erasure?
Erasure poetry is a type of found poetry. It takes an existing text and transforms it into something else by "erasing" parts of the original text. The existing words are left to form a poem. Sometimes the essence of the original text is carried over into the poem; sometimes it is not. Some poets rearrange or change the tense of the words. In my poem, I only added punctuation.
Sample Erasure poems:
My erasure poem:
"God Knows I Love Sam"
An erasure poem from a letter from Sam. Died at the age of scary, He was pure good. Gone, The world an emptier place for the loss. Something incredible, A light inside, Bringing out goodness and beauty. The light, A source of hope, guidance, and joy. A seed of kindness, A beautiful flower grew. Its seeds were scattered and carried by the wind. Soon, there stood stretching acres of flowers, The fruits of kindness. The field is now and always yours, The beautiful field, Always proud. God knows I love Sam. |
francescas_erasure_poem.docx | |
File Size: | 13 kb |
File Type: | docx |
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Understanding the PoemWhen this poem was assigned to me, I knew I didn't want to just use any old text. I wanted to choose something that had personal meaning for me. I felt that the better I understood the original text, the more successful I would be with this assignment.
While I was thinking about this assignment, I began to miss my friend, Sam. I've known Sam since first grade; he is a very dear friend of mine. He tragically passed away earlier this year, and I think about him all the time. When I'm missing him, I sometimes look through old pictures and read things that he wrote for me. In the first weeks after he died, I kept one particular letter next to my bed and read it almost every day. He wrote it for me when we were seniors in high school after we had an assembly about Rachel's Challenge. It was in honor of Rachel Scott, who was killed in the Columbine High School shooting. Rachel Scott's journal entries and poems have been shared with millions across the US. Her main message was that she wanted people to start a "chain reaction" of kindness. During the assembly, the importance of valuing the people in your life was emphasized, and that's why Sam wrote me this letter. The letter is beautiful on so many levels: it's incredibly heartfelt and kind, and the text contains a powerful metaphor. I wanted to preserve the integrity of Sam's letter, but I wanted to make it about him instead of me. I think there is something to the fact that his letter talked about my legacy when I'm eventually gone, and now my poem is about the legacy he left behind after his untimely death. Though I didn't change the overarching meaning of the letter, my poem eliminates the details of our relationship and focuses solely on his kindness. |