Obliterations

by Jessica Piazza, Heather Aimee O'Neill

Every day we are forced to integrate the world’s news into our personal lives; we all have to decide what parts of the flood of news resonate with us and what we need to turn away from, out of necessity or sensitivity. Obliterations—a collection of erasure poems that use The New York Times as their source texts—springs from that seemingly immediate process of personalizing news information. By cutting, synthesizing and arranging existing news items into new poems, the erasure process creates a link between the authors’ poetic sensibilities and the supposedly more “objective” view of the newsmakers. Each author used the same articles but wrote separate erasures without seeing the other’s versions, highlighting the wonderful similarities and differences that arise when two works—or any two people with individual tastes and lenses—share the same stories.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 22, 2016

About the author

Jessica Piazza is the author of three poetry collections: "Interrobang" (Red Hen Press), "This is not a sky" (Black Lawrence Press) and, with Heather Aimee O'Neill, "Obliterations" (Red Hen Press) and a children’s book, “Olivia Otter Builds Her Raft” (FemInEm 2018). Originally from Brooklyn, NY, she holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Southern California, an M.A. in English Literature /Creative Writing from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University. She is co-founder of Gold Line Press and Bat City Review, and curated the Poetry Has Value blog, which explored the intersections of poetry, money and worth. You can learn more and read her work at www.jessicapiazza.com.

Reviews

[Garrett Gomez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great pit stop for me this year. Excellent book and premise. Probably worth doing on my own time with someone else who is interested in the same conceit.

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the media overload of the 21st Century, poets are bound to ask: How much of this information sticks and is it absorbed in the way that is expected? Obliterations: Erasures from the New York Times by Heather Aimee O’Neill and Jessica Piazza, one of the best new authors according to CBS Los Angeles, explores that process by taking articles found in a variety of sections of The New York Times, including real estate and obituaries, and erasing words until a poem emerges from the detritus. Neither poet knew what the other created, and what has emerged is a collection that speaks not to ephemeral constructs but to concrete concerns and connections.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2016/07/o...

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jessica Piazza and Heather Aimee O'Neill each took a series of New York Times articles and created erasure poems from them. It is fascinating how working from the same stories, they each wrote strikingly different poems, though each set is compelling in its own way. The poems are lovely, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing. It seems as if the word choices are the poets own; they have turned the news' stories into their own work.

The result of the project is a collection of beautiful poems, each unique despite coming from the same material.

[Adam Kynaston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is actually the first book of poetry that I have ever enjoyed, full-stop. My wife and I often discuss how much we both hate poetry. It seems so easy to imitate. I simply do not see the value in it at all.

Here is different - This poetry is based on newspaper articles, and the two authors sat down to rewrite the with a rule set. The rules were that they could omit words, but they had to maintain the verb tenses, and the results are fantastic. They each write a poem based on the same article, and the two poems are then presented together.

Reading through two perspectives on the same news article gives you some idea about what the original original article was about, but more importantly, it gives you a sense of what ideas may be buried in the things we casually read. The poetry represents the feeling that the reader of the original news article might’ve been left with, or maybe even the more subtle subconscious intent of the original author.

The result is fun and surprising and often funny. This is an exercise that paid off. The book is short and worth a read.

And I will still only give it 3 stars because I still hate poetry.

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collaborative collection of poetry. Each piece is found poetry pulled from the pages of the New York Times and each poet worked separately to draw their poetry from the news story. It’s fascinating to see the different ways each poet utilizes the words and develops their poems, and the poems side by side evoke different aspects of the story. They’re are explorations of love and sorrow and the beauty and harshness of the world. Lovely.

[Jackson Beck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obliterations is an inventive, beautiful, and unique take on the erasure poetry form. Each two-page spread contains each author's take on the same New York Times news article, whittling it down into a poetic reiteration. The authors didn't read one another's piece until the book was finished, which makes comparing and contrasting their works all the more interesting. The book asks readers to engage with the age of information in which we live in a subjective way, finding meaning in headlines that might otherwise seem impersonal and drab.

[M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow - This was such a unique book. I am new to poetry reading but this concept was so exciting. I liked the story (on the back cover) of the how the book idea stated. This was inspirational - made me want to try this type of poetry writing. I won this in a contest and am happy to give it 5 stars for inspiring me!

[Jessica Piazza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, if you can't be down with your own work, why are you even here? :-)