An experimental form built by removing, blacking out or physically erasing most of the words of an existing text and letting what remains on the page stand as a new poem, a technique that keeps the source text visible as a ghost behind the new one, often called a blackout poem in its most literal, visual form.
Facts
Place of OriginUnited States and Britain, late 20th century. 1 StructureNo fixed meter or rhyme; composed by selectively deleting or visually obscuring words of a pre-existing source text, leaving the remaining words to form the new poem. 1 Notable ExampleRonald Johnson's Radi Os, an erasure of Milton's Paradise Lost; Mary Ruefle's A Little White Shadow. 1 Connections
Form Of Genre
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Influenced By
Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Sources
1. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Princeton University Press
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