I was fascinated by the article in The American Scholar by Jennifer Sinor, “Every Letter is a Love Letter.” She wrote of how Georgia O’Keefe wrote letters for years to her husband. The thing that drew me in was the language, the words in the article expressing the space that letters provide. There is the space of time between the writing and the receiving. In this day when a message can be sent before you even check the spelling, words can fly across vast spaces in a millisecond. I wanted to capture this idea somehow, so I thought of using erasure poetry.
The frustration for me was erasing the other words. So many artists do it in a way that somehow preserves the words behind the erasure. I tried different things so I ended up with a layered look that I don’t hate. I’ve typed the words I kept into poem form below:
Every Letter
we find those spaces void
you see canyons
empty spaces reveal vastness
Time in life’s work
experience of being in art
we fit ourselves
I wrote to my husband
Before long He left quiet communion,
heart of prayer, easy, difficult love letters.
You take your wounds handwritten
to be unrecognizable.
A letter is time–
rest in the gapacross space
binding us
to moment
to everyone–
Margaret Simon, erasure poem
Reflections on the Teche 
So many beautiful lines in your erasure poem. I really love the first stanza and how it starts with something vast and the idea of time–then how we use art to ground us. I always wonder about the discarded words too. You’ve definitely inspired me to try this!
I like your found poem! I have been following Isolation Journals and their prompt this weekend of just this. Looking for poems in others words. I have not done this for years. I might be a fun thing to do this week. Thanks
[…] thought let’s just read one more of these posts they are so much fun. So on I went to Margaret Simon’s Erasure Every Letter. She was thinking about time again but that time between writing a hand […]
Everything about this post is beautiful. The erasure of the text reminds me of hopscotch. Jumping from word to word.
I particularly like the idea of letters and t the “rest in the gap
across space”
Beautiful. And I loved the article as well. My father wrote letters to me when I was in college and I can’t find many of them now which makes me so sad. He was a beautiful writer. Have you ever ready E.B. and Katherine White’s letters to each other? Glorious.
So…is erasure poetry another term for blackout poetry? I love the look of the erasure on the page. What kind of texts do you use to do this kind of poetry with kids?
Kim
I think it’s the same thing. With kids you can make a copy of a page from a book. I also like to do it with nonfiction text to figure out the gist.
This is such a beautiful piece, Margaret. The final lines are so powerful–this notion of a space that binds us together. Now I want to read this article and try an erasure poem. Thank you, as always, for the inspiration!