142. Poetry by Erasure – Natalie Warther
Tom Phillips, A Humament (page 28), 1991.
And that’s all erasure poetry is: a manipulation, creation through elimination, an intense form of revision.
I began playing with erasure poetry in the early months of quarantine. When I felt overwhelmed by the world around me, it was much less daunting to manipulate a preexisting thing than to create something from scratch.
And that’s all erasure poetry is: a manipulation, creation through elimination, an intense form of revision. It’s a whittling down until the original text is unrecognizable, until it no longer belongs to its original creator—until the thing that needs to be said through you is left there on the page.
The great poet and writer Mary Ruefle describes her experience creating erasures: “All the words rise up and they hover a quarter inch above the page. I don’t actually read the page. I read the words, which is different.”
In an original text, words strung together into sentences and paragraphs possess coherent and specific meaning. But when the words are isolated, rearranged, and placed in conversation with blank space, they show their true personalities. They detach themselves from narrative purpose. They become sonic, and rhythmic, and maybe, a little, they hover.
To me, the job is freeing in its simplicity: eliminate words until a new path is cleared. It’s meditative, it’s playful. It’s a space where we can be writers without ever writing a word.
