Good evening readers!

An unfortunately tiring and busy couple of weeks have delayed this frightfully short blog entry! Last week we looked at “Found Literature” with a focus on Erasure (no, not that one). The idea behind Erasure (not that one) is taking an existing text and simply erasing parts of it with the aim of giving the remaining text either a refined version of the old meaning or an entirely new one. This form particularly lends itself to poetry which is a much more flexible form of writing.

My first piece was an erasure of some poems from Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson by James Reeve. While erasure poetry is best viewed as the mess of selective de-highlighting that it’s made of, I’ll try and recreate the original’s format below, writing only what was left after my erasure:

33

Agony

I know

Men

Simulate

Death –

Impossible

Beads

Strung

34

Wild nights

Were I thee,

Wild nights should be

Futile

To a heart

Done with

Eden –

Ah,

Might I moor tonight

In thee.

35

The thing with feathers

That perches

And sings the tune

And never stops

Gale is heard;

Bash the little bird

It asked a crumb of me

36

Light

Winter

Oppresses

Cathedral tunes.

The second text I erased was some Emily Brontë. I have reorganised it into a more cohesive poem, but I present to you;

5. A Death (A Death-Scene, Erasured)

O die shining Sun, tranquilly declining;

Leave now, West Winds are blowing,

And all around thy light is glowing!

Awake – the golden gleams

Thee, I pray

Wouldst yet one hour delay:

I hear my straining eye

Believe not Eden

Turn back that tempestuous pain

I cannot rest!

Long mute suffering

Useless sudden grieving

Awful day.

Paled, the sun setting

Peace fell softly, silent eyes weary,

Weighed beneath sleep;

Their orbs grew, they wept, never closed;

Troubled still.

I was dying – stooped, languid head;

So dead.