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I'm erasing The Age of Innocence as part of The Found Poetry Review's Pulitzer Remix project for National Poetry Month.

I love erasure--it's both constructive and destructive in ways that appeal to the DIY sensibilities of my inner punk. I love the mystery of what I'm going to capture as I drag my marker across the page. I love the challenge of limiting my work to the vocabulary available on a single page, and I love how my voice ends up changing in harmony with the original author's voice.

My erasures often take the form of mixed-media collage, because most of the page ends up being a void that I'm just dying to fill back up again. In that way, my erasures are more like Tom Phillips' Humament than some of the newer erasure poems, like Mary Ruefle's A Little White Shadow (which I highly recommend). Maybe I'm just a frustrated visual artist at heart. Whatever it is, I'm looking forward to hours alone with my silver Sharpie, tiny scissors, and Edith Wharton.