Erasures falls into the “it”s interesting, but is it poetry” category. Take a published text, go through it and start erasing words that don”t belong in the poem and when you”re done you have… something that may approach poetry, something that may be interesting to read, something – well… different. I”m reminded of the the sculptor who, when asked how he created such beautiful sculptures of birds from stone replied, “I just chip away anything that isn”t a bird.” (Okay, so the real quote may read a little differntly, but I”m sure that you get the idea.) Take a paragraph from a book, whittle away anything that isn”t a poem and – are you left with a poem? And if so… who actually wrote it? You? The original author? Some uncollaborative collaboration between the two?

Erasures is also a web site equipped with software that lets you create erasure poems. So… Louisa May Aclott”s treacly “Flower Fables” becomes

by a simple matter of clicking on words to erase or unerase words in a selected passage. It”s an interesting exercise in paring words from form, editing for sense and sound – practice for a poet learning to revise his poems without the painful exercise of cutting your own work up. Give it a try and see what you can make of a block of text.