Found Poetry Collages by Mary Bast: erasure poem

Showing posts with label erasure poem. Show all posts

Monday, September 8, 2014

that she will

Photo of Rose McClendon statue at Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater
and erasure poem from Michael Cunningham's The Hours

that she will see

fill with stories

live in full possession

something ravenous

ancient, central

rise in the hope

of finding

realm of the dead bird

Found Poem from Cunningham's The Hours

after the mourners

have laid down wreaths

wheels have rolled away

the grave remains

frightening

this cemetery feeling

body tiny even for a bird

utterly unalive, a lost

handful of death

how much more space

a being occupies in life

brightness in the desert

barren of water
no dark
only degrees of radiance

the air itself whispers

begins to enshroud

like a chrysalis

hours pass

full of vision

Erasure poem "brightness in the desert" and photo of Asilomar by Mary Bast,
Source of poem: page 71 of The Hours by Michael Cunningham

irreparable harm

Erasure poem "irreparable harm" by Mary Bast

Source: page 81, Journey of the Heart, John Welwood

Submitted to Apeiron Review

help!

diving

hot and sweaty
against her ass

one of those
priests

they talked
so dirty

they were
Darth Vader

Erasure poem "help!" by Mary Bast,

Source: page 65, The Round House by Louise Erdrich

really smoking

Erasure poem by Mary Bast

Source: Michael Cunningham's The Hours, page 15.

NOTE: This poem and "out there" derive from the same page in The Hours.

out there

everything sweet

hide only

the stern, rigorous,

righteous, dark

heavy, suspicious

dangerous

Erasure poem by Mary Bast

Source: Michael Cunningham's The Hours, page 15.

NOTE: This poem and "really smoking" derive from the same page in The Hours.

ready for more

trees produce

perfect leaves

red geraniums

rogue dandelion

alive, simple

feels good

rampant growth

dragonflies

among cattails

grassy smell

sharpened by pine sap

Erasure poem and photo of garden at Krisnamurti Centre in UK by Mary Bast,

source of found poem Michael Cunningham's The Hours

a scolded child

misgivings, doubts

slothful?

a scolded child

where is she now?

red-faced, chastened

will not smile

Erasure poem by Mary Bast from page 72 of

Michael Cunnhingham's The Hours.

Note: This poem is from the same page in The Hours as "misgivings"

About Me

Former Editor at Bacopa Literary Review, I write poetry, found poetry, and memoir. When my hands aren't on computer keys they're creating art.

The Found Poetry Review's 2015 PoMoSco (Poetry Month Scouts) project especially intrigued me -- the chance to experiment with a variety of found poetry structures.

Those exercises also enhanced my under-standing of poetry and writing in general. For example, the "First in Line" badge required creating a poem from first lines in one poet's collection.

My resulting poem, "The Days Have Done With You" (from Nina Bogin's collection In the North) made me much more aware of the way a poem's first line can either set up what's going to happen or drop us right into action, much the same as the start of a good novel.

Some Forms of Found Poetry

Found poetry is created by taking words or phrases from other sources and changing spacing and lines, adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. Any poetic form can be used with found poetry.

There's also the cento—made up of lines from other poems. The sources may be poems of a single poet, or many poets, or even many different languages.

Erasure poems eliminate everything from a page or pages except the words that make up the poem. The "erasure" may be accomplished by white-out, correction tape (of various colors), lightening a photo and writing the poem's words over the original text, and many other variations.

Called blackout poems when covered with black tape (often refers to newspaper articles blacked out except for the words of the poem).

Ekphrasis usually refers to poetry inspired by visual art; I've extended the term to include art inspired by poetry.

Illustrated poetry describes poems and art side by side.

Haiga traditionally incorporated an ink-brush or watercolor painting, a haiku poem, and calligraphy. Modern poets stretch these boundaries, superimposing haiku on photos, for example.