SOURCE: [an erasure poem from The Great Gatsby, Chapter 2, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200041h.html%5D
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Found poems and replacement poems have been in my repertoire as I’ve used them as a teaching method to ease self-proclaimed non-poets into poetry. “Steal!” I encourage them. However, I’ve never tried my hand at an erasure poem. Until now. Inspired by the poems I see in flipping through the pages of The Great Gatsby Anthology, I scrolled through the Gutenberg version of Fitzgerald’s novel until a phrase jumped at me. From there, I selected the surrounding passage, and read straight through, mining for the underlying poem. It kind of wrote itself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Christina M. Rau is the author of the poetry chapbooks WakeBreatheMove (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and For The Girls, I (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Founder of Poets In Nassau, a reading circuit on Long Island, New York, her poetry has appeared on gallery walls in The Ekphrastic Poster Show, on car magnets for The Living Poetry Project, most recently in the journals Redheaded Stepchild and The Main Street Rag, and in the anthologies Till The Tide: An Anthology of Mermaid Poetry (Sundress Publications, 2015) and The Great Gatsby Anthology (Silver Birch Press, 2015). In her non-writing life, she practices yoga occasionally and line dances on other occasions. Find her links on http://alifeofwe.blogspot.com.
Silver Birch Press 