Erasure poetry is a form of found poetry created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem. The results can be allowed to stand in situ or they can be arranged into lines and/or stanzas.
Want to see more erasure poetry? Check out Newspaper Blackout
Three Hundred Thousand More by James Sloan Gibbons
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi’s winding stream and from New England’s shore;
We leave our plows and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear;
We dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before,
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more.
If you look across the hilltops that meet the northern sky,
Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry;
And now the wind, an instant, tears the cloudy veil aside,
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride;
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam, and bands brave music pour,
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more.
If you look all up our valleys, where the growing harvests shine,
You may see our sturdy farmer – boys fast forming into line;
And children from their mothers’ knees are pulling at the weeds,
And learning how to reap and sow, against their country’s needs;
And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage door,
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more.
You have called us, and we’re coming, by Richmond’s bloody tide,
To lay us down for freedom’s sake, our brother’s bones beside;
Or from foul treason’s savage group to wrench the murderous blade,
And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to parade;
Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone before,
We are coming, Father Abraam, three hundred thousand more.
Example 1: Three Hundred Thousand More
steadfast.
lines of rising dust
bayonets
boys fast forming into line;
brother’s bones.
murderous blade
fragments
six hundred thousand gone before
three hundred thousand more.
Example 2: We are coming
