Poetics 1

I found the object poem to be harder than I originally thought. I sat in my house looking around me and found nothing interesting really. I moved to a new room and again nothing that really stuck out at me. Finally I said, "Hey Mom, give me an object I can write a poem about." To which she replied, "How about an eraser." And I went on from there.

When writing this poem I actually didn't look at an eraser at all. I found it easier to think of one in my head and the different aspects of it that I remember. It actually brought me back to my childhood because I hadn't really used one of those block erasers in a long time. I think it was easier to write the poem not looking at the eraser so that I didn't get all caught up in just the outside of it. I hoped to talk about the interior and exterior in my poem and thinking about it in my mind made this easier.

I discovered that there is a lot more to an eraser than meets the eye. I really thought I was just going to write about what it looked like but when I got a little deeper I realized how important an eraser is really and how it has so much power that it can eliminate mistakes. I tried to model my poem like the one we read in class about the oyster. I wanted to be creative with it and end with a strong line like the one about the pearl. My favorite part about my poem is the last line. If I left it out, you would just think,"okay cool eraser." But the last sentence gives it depth and a new perception of how the eraser can actually erase itself.