Erasure Poem - Neruda

If You Forget Me 

I want you to know
one thing



Portrait by Katherine Jeanne Wood

if you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you 

do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you decide
to leave me at the shore
I will set off
to seek another land.

But (after a time)
if you feel that you are destined for me
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire  is extinguished
your love will be without  mine.





Imaginary Garden with Real Toads


From the Latin word for “patchwork," the cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form made up of lines from poems by other poets. Though poets often borrow lines from other writers and mix them in with their own, a true cento is composed entirely of lines from other sources. Early examples can be found in the work of Homer and Virgil.

Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry (a literary equivalent of a collage) by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning.