Prompt–Monday, February 20

Suzanna Anderson Creates ♦ February 19, 2012 ♦ Leave a comment

A friend of mine gave me a copy of “The Ms of M Y Kin” by Janet Holmes, which is a book of cross-out poems from some of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. A cross-out poem is, by my definition (since I couldn’t find a definition in either of my poetry dictionaries), a poem created by blocking out or crossing out text to create a new poem.

Austin Kleon made cross-out poetry with “Newspaper Blackout” (http://www.austinkleon.com/newspaperblackout/) and Tom Phillips made cross-out poetry with “Humument” (http://humument.com/). I started cross-out poems last semester with an old mystery novel I bought at Grounds for Thought.

So my challenge to you today is to do the reverse of cross-out poetry: add words to Holmes’ cross-out poem.

The Ms of M Y Kin by Janet Holmes

Here’s what I came up with:

Suzanna’s Cross-out Fill-In poem

You’re more than welcome to focus on a few of the lines and you’re not required to use all of the lines.