Today's prompt over at NaPoWriMo is to make an erasure poem. I chose to use a piece of text from Moby-Dick.
Here is the final poem with formatting and punctuation:
Wooden whales,
or whales out of the dark.
Noble forecastles.
Brass whales tail for door.
The sleepy-headed whale
would be best.
Whales are faithful churches.
Whales are so elevated.
Bony, ribby high masses
of rock, fantastic groupings.
Discover the Leviathan.
From some lucky point of view,
you will catch glimpses
of the of whales undulating.
But you must be thorough.
You must be sure, precise,
laborious, incognita.
Trace out great whales
in the starry heavens,
and boats -- nations among the
clouds.
Here is the original M-B text:
Wooden whales,
or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea
war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of American whalers. Some
of them are done with much accuracy.
At
some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by the tail
for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy, the anvil-headed
whale would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom remarkable as
faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned churches you will see
sheet-iron whales placed there for weather- cocks; but they are so elevated,
and besides that are to all intents and purposes so labelled with 'Hands off!'
you cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit.
In
bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken cliffs
masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain, you will often
discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in
grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges.
Then,
again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually girdled by
amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point of view you will
catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges.
But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that,
but if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the
exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else so
chance- like are such observations of the hills, that your precise, previous
stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery; like the Solomon islands,
which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and
old Figuera chronicled them.
Nor
when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out great whales
in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as when long filled with
thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in battle among the
clouds.
