Assignment 8

In this class so far, all of your assignments have required you to write something original, to compose and combine words, images, characters and ideas that you have imagined. 

This week there will be no composing. Only erasing.

This is the first page of Ronald Johnson's book, Radi Os:

O         tree

                          into the World,
                                                      Man


                                                  the chosen

          Rose out of Chaos:


                                                 song,



The poem was created by a process of erasure which involves erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem.

Johnson's erausure used John Milton's Paradise Lost as its found text.  Here is the first page from which Johnson's poem comes:


Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [5]
Sing Heav'nly Muse,that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill [10]
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues [15]
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

For your assignment, I would like you to find a piece of text online. The piece must be in prose (fiction, news article, blog, etc.) but can come from any source. Then I would like you to perform your own erasure on it. Please bring a copy of both the source text and your poem to class next week.