Out of Standard

Greetings Garden Dwellers.  Welcome back to Out of Standard, where I will set before you a challenge to defy the conventions of a particular theme.  I will call upon you to write out of the standard and find new places in the everyday, but caution: there will be a twist.  Let’s move onward to February’s challenge...

KEEPIN IT CLOSE TO HOME: ERASURE

Wikipedia defines erasure poem as a poem created by erasing words from an existing text and framing the result on the page as a poem. The results can be allowed to stand in place, or they can arranged into lines and/or stanzas.

Below is an example of an erasure poem cobbled from a work of Bukowski.

Erasure poems can be used as a tool to reframe a political dialogue.  In her book The ms of my kin, Janet Homes erases the poems of Emily Dickinson written in 1861-62, the first few years of the Civil War, to discuss the more contemporary Iraq War.

But this is the Out of Standard, and you all knew there was a twist coming. 

The Challenge:

Go to your local news source, be it a newspaper or website and write an erasure poem from a local news story which posted today.  Your erasure poem may be as long or short as you would like, but you must adhere to the following rules

1. You cannot add text to your poem.  All lines must already exist within the news story.
2. You cannot change the order of the words or lines.  They must appear in the same order which they appeared in the story. 

KEEP IN MIND 

Like every challenge, your poem must by newly written for this challenge and not one which you have previously written which conveniently fits the theme.  

So go now, my muddy buddies, and bring us back something shiny and new.