Genre Three Digital

For this genre, I chose to make a YouTube video showing the process of creating a blackout poem.  This video shows me starting off my selecting a novel, “The Razors Edge.” From there, I flip through the pages until I find one that I find suitable. I then highly encourage the use of pencil when you begin. Once outlined in pencil, you can go back with anything that separates the chosen words from the ones around it, like a sharpie or pen. Although it doesn’t go incredibly in-depth, the video at least provides the general idea of blackout poems to the public.

 

 

 

 

 

Rhetorical Rationale 3

For my three genres I chose to focus purely on the blackout poetry aspect of erasure. My first genre is a twitter page that I posted on by retweeting other poems but also tweeting my own original works. My second genre was a comparison of two different blackout poems from two different sources, one fictional and one academic. This was in order to show my audience that the poem didnt depend on the text that it was coming from. My third and final genre was an instructional video on how to write blackout poetry on your own. The hardest part was finding outlets that my target audience used frequently it a manner that would get my message across a wide area. Because of this, I settled on the Twitter page and the YouTube video. The idea for a how to video was actually given to me as a suggestion by a classmate during a workshop. Because my target audience is those who aren’t familiar with erasure or blackout poetry, they felt that showing it as an approachable object in a tutorial video would make it more inviting. The purpose of these genres was to really show the messages that I was trying to get through in my previous projects, that blackout poetry is not plagiarism because it doesn’t take from the source, it only works within the framework of words. I did most of my brainstorming absent-mindedly while studying for finals in the library and I found that on certain pages there are phrases that set the mood for the whole poem and its more about finding words to build up those phrases rather than looking for inspiration is just pages of text. It was fun to get to work with my research first hand as I created th poems, it made me feel almost more invested in my writing.

Rhetorical Rationale 2

The hardest part about writing this paper to me was finding a way to differ between what I saw as important and what was truly important to my reader. I felt that my opinion ended up shining through more in my final draft than my rough draft. My first draft contained so many flaws, not in my argument but instead on where I was going with the paper. The purpose of my paper was to get more attention to an art form I’ve grown to love, erasure, and explain the difference between art and plagiarism and the fine line that an artist walks between the two. As a modern society, especially millennials, we feel as if we are so attuned to plagiarism because it has been such a huge factor in our educational lives. People in a position of power have always threatened us with the consequences of cheating, so much to the point that we can’t appreciate the beauty is the world around us. Blackout poetry, and all erasure for that matter, is a work of art truly. Yet, I feel as though people are afraid to love it, afraid to try it, in fear of the legal consequences. So much around us is copied or “sampled” and we don’t notice it because we only think of plagiarism as something it literature, which is why I included the example of Vanilla Ice and his song “Ice Ice Baby.” I was lucky enough that this topic interest me as a person, not just as a student. It made it easier to write based on the information I would be interested in as a reader. Thus, I feel like my writing is more fluid and sounds less forced. As I continued to write, my paper became more centralized and focused. I tried to address too much at once and my research paper was all over the place. The hardest part for me as including all seven digital artifacts because I felt that having so many took away from my paper. I felt so forced trying to inject them into my writing without making it feel forced.

Rhetorical Rationale 1

 

I was fortunate enough to be truly interested in what I wrote about. Erasure and blackout poetry are both such beautiful art forms that get so little recognition. From my draft to my final version, I feel as though I became more confident in my topic and that shines through the change in my diction. I found the digital artifact that I wrote this piece about on Twitter and had liked it for some time. It captured my attention not because it’s the most well written blackout poem or because I felt connected to it but because it was derived from “The Great Gatsby.” Because this is such a well-known book, I felt as though it would contribute best to the point I was trying to make.

The purpose of this artifact was to circulate it to those who are interested in the art of erasure already. The audience were the followers of the twitter page from which the artifact was derived but my purpose of having this artifact as my focus point was to expand that audience past those who already knew about blackout poetry. Through workshopping my drafts and ideas with my class I could find out what interested them the most as people who were being exposed for the first time. What captured their interest is what I chose to focus on for my paper, that way I became more effective in my argument. My definition of genre definitively changed throughout this process. I use to see it as a far more ridged categorization but it is now clear to me that there are many different niches that things fit into, just like blackout poetry.

As this paper progressed I felt that I grew as a writer and I also grew to have a deeper understanding of both my topic and my working definition of a genre.

Genre Two Physical

Comparison between two blackout poems from two completely different text. The purpose of this genre is to show that, no matter what literature the poem is based on, the text of the poem is individual and separate. The first poem comes from a socilogy textbook and is purely informative. The second comes from “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen which is a fictional, late 19th centruy novel. Not only are sources worlds apart, but the blackout poems which stem from them are as well. This orignial work makes it more obvious to my auidence that blackout poetry is both easily done and unique.

Genre One Social Media

 

 

https://twitter.com/blackout_poems

@blackout_poems

This genre shows blackout poems through Twitter. Because social media is by far the most used platform among teenagers and young adults, it makes perfect sense in order to spread a topic that is so little spoken about. This twitter pages shows the stages of my writing process, retweets of other artist’s work, and calls to the public to try blackout poetry for themselves. This relates to my topic because the focus of my portfolio was blackout poetry and copyright laws affect on creativity and this Twitters makes it easier to give an actual archive of examples.

Project One Introduction

A genre has such a basic definition that is incredibly well known to so many that it is hard to redefine it. Webster defines genre as “a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content,” a way that things are grouped in order to make sense of them. Beyond the concept of genres taught in lower level English, what is a genre truly? It’s human nature to find similarities in the world around us and English is no exception. A genre is simply a way to be in control of what we are understanding which is why it is so hard to grasp the concept of genres being fluid. Genres outline nearly everything in daily life, whether we choose to place value in them or not. This property makes them the perfect muse for creativity, something that people can define for themselves within reason. This exact creativity is why blackout poetry so unique. The ability to take another authors literal words and ideas and morph them into something completely different shows the fluidity of English the same way that genres do. Genres ability to cross multiple categories is specifically noticeable in blackout poetry because it not only fits into multitudes of subsets of poetry but it also works within the outline of novels or other pieces if literary works.

Proposal One

I’m doing my proposal on blackout poetry, specifically one from the Great Gatsby. I’m doing this because I love how someone can draw from another authors voice and completely change the meaning of the excerpt while leaving the words themselves intact.  

Erasure draft

Globally in 2016, it seems impossible to have a unique thought. Having an idea to call your own is seemingly impossible without stepping on a multitude of toes and going through miles of red tape. The legal system is constantly adapting, especially when it comes to laws on copyright and intellectual property, and the government expects students to keep up to date. With MLA format changing what feels like bi-weekly and websites trying to prevent plagiarism making you feel guilty for every common saying, it seems demanding to expect even the most experienced writers to stay on track. With these laws becoming more and more common, it is important to understand where exactly the line is between working from a similar set of ideas and plagiarizing. Blackout poetry is revolutionizing the world of poetry but, at the same time, it is blurring the line between creationism and plagiarism even more. Erasure is an expression of self, just like all forms of art. It is not plagiarism to draw from the muse of other authors because erasure alters the meaning of the text. This can be shown specifically through cultural plagiarism such as remixes of music. Not only is erasure not plagiarism, but the increase of intellectual property law as stifled creativity.

Blackout poetry is relatively new to the literary world. Although is finds its roots in something quite known to many, the practice of erasure, its unique ability to transform another author’s work into an original piece is unmatched. Erasure is when an author works within a previously written paper and uses those words to create something new. Many, however, would argue that erasure is unoriginal work, acts of plagiarism. Even one of its forefathers Kenneth Goldsmith, calls it “uncreative writing” (Cooney.) According to Cooney, there are two types of erasure writing, “’complete’ erasures and palimpsest, and other,” complete being poetry that is kept intact whereas the “other” being erasure that actually erases words from the text. Blackout poetry falls into this category because it is a subset of erasure. Blackout poetry consist of an author working within the framework of a previously written paper and blacking out works to create something with a different meaning. These visual clues help readers see the contrast between the original work and the ending result. It becomes even more clear to the reader that the altered piece is a new work in its own right, not just something branching off the work of the original piece. Yet, even amongst all the visual evidence of alteration, many people doubt the authenticity of erasure, stating that by working in the framework of a previous authors work, you are in fact taking a piece of their intellectual property. However, erasure is not plagiarism because it only pulls from a framework, not the ideas themselves.  The laws that protect intellectual property are such an issue because “people routinely misunderstand or do not obey laws protecting intellectual property (IP), leading to a variety of (largely unsuccessful) efforts by policymakers, IP owners, and researchers to change those beliefs and behaviors” (Fast, Anne). So how does erasure poetry fit in? By definition, it stems from the work of another, therefore it should technically fall under the laws of intellectual property protection.  Even if it nods to the original author, like Fast suggest, the fundamentals are the same. However, the content within the written piece of work is different. These blurred lines are the source between not only reader, but many writers as well.

Intellectual property is an idea that has existed since the medieval times, passing into actual law in the late 1600s in England. Without the widespread use of the printing press, let alone something as vast as the internet, keeping tabs on what ideas belonged to which enlightened man was not a difficult task. It was typical for “authors not to declare copyright to their work” (Davidson 90-91) because they often couldn’t circulate the piece own their own (Crawford, Benjamin). This practice has made the true authors hard to track. Modern technology has made the task much more daunting. Somehow many people still manage to plagiarise parts of others work. Quite a few of T.S Eliot’s poems have pieces taken from less famous poets, such as his poem “The Waste Land” (Evans, Robert). Access to so many sources of knowledge and ways to cultivate ideas can cloud someone into plagiarism even if that wasn’t their task. Taking someone’s ideas and calling them your own is an obvious violation of the intellectual property laws set up worldwide, yet that makes it hard to even share similar ideas, writing is bound to have traceable overlaps. Many examples of blackout poetry don’t even draw inspiration from the pieces its formed from, it exists purely on its own. There is no hard and fast rule for where erasure becomes plagiarism there are just authors who choose to act on people molding their original work.

This seems to say that, in Western society, certain kinds of plagiarism are more forgivable than others. Intentional plagiarism such as copying and pasting is universally seen as wrong. However, unintentional plagiarism has mixed receptions among the public. Taking your own words from another article you’ve already written without citing yourself is considered plagiarism. Plagiarizing sentence structure counts as well. The written word is not the only thing that’s plagiarized though.  Songs that are remixed are equivalent to erasure in my opinion because both are alterations of the original that work within the framework yet change the most crucial things about the piece. Most remixes in music do not include all the lyrical content from the original song, just like how erasure doesn’t contain all the words from the original piece of written work. The beat and tempo in the music is altered to the point that the lyrics are the only thing that can trace the remix back to the original. The core of the song is changed, which makes it free from copyright law. With the availability of technology, most of the population can not say they aren’t guilty of copyright infringement. Nearly 57 million Americans are illegally downloading music now and that’s not including pirating movies (Geddes, James). It seems hypocritical to knock down a source of creativity for a crime that an overwhelming amount of the population commits, especially when plagiarism is not the goal of erasure. Erasure changes the core of a written work beyond recognition, which makes the source of the original irrelevant. I believe that if this wasn’t the case, creativity would be stifled.

Intellectual property law and copy right law makes it so difficult to have a creative work of art nowadays. I feel that the increase in intellectual property law actually decreases the amount of creativity, which can be shown through erasure. People argue that things such as blackout poetry, or the practice of erasure is plagiarism when it is truly just a creative outlet like anything else. The authors or poets aren’t trying to lay claim to the original piece, most would prefer not even to have it titled because it takes away from their work. They create something unique in their own form. Recycled artwork is stylistically made from other people’s original work, but that doesn’t contribute to the piece as a whole. The same could be said erasure. It takes bits and pieces from another author whole in order to make something new and beautiful. “The law assumes that the value of intellectual property can be determined only on the basis of a work’s content, even if that content is itself not protectable. The law rewards creativity in ideas by protecting their expression in a work, but it rewards creativity in expression only if there is otherwise no creativity at the level of content. Content has priority” (Ross, Trevor). This expression of work being hindered truly limits the advancements that we can make as a creative whole. Because this idea of content taking priority, erasure blurs the line. The content is completely altered and drawn from different sources. Blackout poetry more exemplifies the alteration in content. Blackout poetry is far more about the visual ques that are given off then where the poem stems from. Working within another authors framework adds another layer of depth and a challenge but it is not a necessity to the content of the poem created. The words that makeup the poem are just words that obviously could be written elsewhere, the visual effect and the challenge posed is what sets blackout poetry apart from other styles and makes it a kind of erasure literature.

Erasure and all that stems from it is, like blackout poetry, is not plagiarism. Although many critics see blackout poetry as “uncreative,” (Cooney) the added challenge of working inside the framework of another authors work sets it apart from other poems. Society views certain kinds of plagiarism as more forgivable than others. For example, copying and pasting from someone else’s paper and claiming it as your own is universally wrong whereas making mistakes in citing is not nearly as offensive. In the modern Western world where everything is so readily available online, many of us find it too hard to resist pirating videos or illegally downloading music and breaking copyright law. Intellectual property law is less understood than copyright law and that’s one reason that it is still so hard to grasp the multitude of ways to break it. Erasure is not plagiarism it is simply  means to express oneself.

Cooney, Brian, and Brian C. Cooney. ““Nothing is Left Out”: Kenneth Goldsmith’s Sports and Erasure Poetry.” Journal of modern literature 37.4 (07): 16; 16,33; 33. Print.

This passage shows the different kinds of erasure poetry and focuses on the different kinds of erasure, postmodern and modernist poetry. It evaluates one the founders of blackout poetry and his works and how he transformed erasure as a genre.

Crawford, Benjamin Darrell. “A Case of Poetic Plagiarism in the Early United States.” ANQ (Lexington, Ky.) 26.3 (2013): 189; 189. Print.

This passage evaluates the depth of plagiarism in American literature. These two poems are compared for their literal similarities and it shows a cross between poems stemming from early modern literature.

Fast, Anne. “Experimental Investigations on the Basis for Intellectual Property Rights.” 40.4 (2016): 458-76. Print.

This explores the idea of creative commons and the legal aspects of intellectual property. It also exposes how many people view that infringement, as long as it nods to the author, is far less severe. This plays into blackout poetry because it is based in someone else’s work.

Hetherington, Paul. “Poetic Self-Inventions: Hoaxing, Misrepresentation and Creative License in Poetry.” New writing (Clevedon, England) 10.1 (2013): 18; 18. Print.

This article addresses the sincerity of poetry as an art. The author evaluates if poetry can be considered raw if it is conveyed through the guise of a mask. This works well with my piece because it argues that maybe all poetry is an extension of someone elses work, not just specifically erasure and blackout poetry.

Ross, Trevor. “The Fate of Style in an Age of Intellectual Property.” ELH 80.3 (2013): 747; 747. Print.

This article explores the extent to which laws on intellectual property hinder poets and authors. It states that in the 18^th century, intellectual property laws didn’t protect ideas, only the direct arrangement of words. Modern laws are much stricter and limit the author by stating that a broad idea itself belongs to someone and is no longer considered a societal theme.

Seale, Tara, and Dan Bruno. “Steal Like a Teacher: NCTE and Professional Growth.” English journal 105.5 (05): 13; 13. Print.

This is a source that compiles media for English teachers. It relates to my work because it is a digital archive that takes small pieces from a whole work for learning but it isn’t affected by copyright laws. This draws attention to the blurry line that copyright law and intellectual property law stems from.

Geddes, James. “57 Million Americans Are Downloading Music Illegally: Study.” Tech Times. Tech Time News, 29 Feb. 2016. Web. 07 Nov. 2016.

This is a source that isn’t peer reviewed but evaluates the increase of Americans who are guilty of copyright infringement, specifically that of illegally downloading music.

Evans, Robert. “5 Great Men Who Built Their Careers on Plagiarism.” Cracked.com. Cracked, 29 Apr. 2009. Web. 07 Nov. 2016.

This source is not peer reviewed but it shows many famous people who have stood on the backs of others to become successful. It helps draw the line between creativity and plagiarism and gives examples of when society has fallen flat in caring about plagiarism.

Erasure and how it Transcends its Source

A genre is the way that things are grouped in order to make sense of them. It’s human nature to find similarities in the world around us and English is no exception. A genre is simply a way to be in control of what we are understanding. This explains why it is so hard to grasp the concept of genres being fluid. Genres outline nearly everything in daily life, whether we choose to place value in them or not. This property makes them the perfect muse for creativity, something that people can define for themselves within reason. Because of this exact creativity, blackout poetry so considered so unique. The ability to take another authors literal words and ideas and morph them into something completely different shows the fluidity of English the same way that genres do. Genres ability to cross multiple categories is specifically noticeable in blackout poetry because it not only fits into multitudes of subsets of poetry but it also works within the outline of novels or other pieces if literary works.

I chose my digital artifact because it stems from a very well-known book, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. An anonymous author took on of the most famous pieces of literature and completely altered the meaning of the passage. The words are the same and the order is the same yet the author of the poem made them their own. The ability to work inside the framework of another authors words and create something truly your own parallels genre because it fits in more than one category.  The creationism that is so unique to English is called into question here as one author turns another’s words into their own interpretation of the work. Blackout poetry is a particular subset of poetry because it is based off another authors original thoughts. Blackout poetry is defined as when “the author uses a permanent marker to cross out or eliminate whatever words or images he sees as unnecessary or irrelevant to the effect he’s seeking to create.” Poetry as a genre typically consist of new ideas, commonly with a rhyme scheme or a rhythm. In contrast, blackout poetry is free versed and is understood to be a poem but not in the generic sense. This broadcast the fluidity of genres themselves as blackout poetry overlaps with elements from novels as well as the traditional ideas of poetry. Poets commonly restrain themselves by writing only a specific kind of poem such as ballads and blank verse poetry. Poetry as a genre has on its own over fifty subsets. Genre by nature allow itself to be at the discretion of the observer. English has so many different sides that it is impossible to limit it to one grouping. My digital article could be either grouped as a novel or a poem. As a poem, it is considered visual poetry, specifically free verse. Beyond that, it is also erasure poetry because it is taken from a larger text, “The Great Gatsby.” By definition, erasure is the act of removing or erasing something so erasure poetry is a poem founded on the concept of erasing parts of a written piece to make it new. The fact that this specific poem was taken from such a well-known novel also places constraints on it. Visual ques are no longer enough to prove that the meaning of the text has been altered since the original work is so recognizable. The poet has to transcend the common plot of the novel and make it his own, especially because the poem discloses what novel it stems from. This relates back to the conflict caused both between creationism and erasure poetry and also genres fluid nature.

The ability to create something original is something unique to humans. This creation of ideas is not immune to cultural and religious barriers, concepts that hold true to some do not necessarily relate to others. Like genres, this allows text to be subject to different interpretations of the same words. Erasure poetry has the same effect; words are subject to interpretation beyond anything that the original author could have imagined. This calls into question the idea of creationism and if the erasure poetry is unique to the poet or part of intellectual property belonging to the original author. Although the poet changes the meaning entirely in most cases, they are still working within the framework of another authors idea. Poetry of erasure is happening all around us, those who take parts from a whole, who shape something new out of something preexisting. This clashes with the idea of intellectual property, or owning a thought, making it a possession instead of a shared value.

Blackout poetry is versatile, not unlike most written pieces, so it fits in a multitude of genre. Genre is fluid, it doesn’t have set rules or restrictions. My digital artifact, for my purposes, fits in the genre of poetry. Although it comes from a novel, I will not place it in that grouping. Besides being a poem, it belongs in the subset poetry of erasure, specifically blackout poetry. There are many different ways to analyze the poem “The Great Gatsby” or even if it should be analyzed separately from the novel itself. The poem finds its value is its visual aspect just as much, if not more, as it does its words. It becomes clear to the reader just how much the poet has taken from the work or how much they have changed it into something of their own. Despite this, many believe that in order to avoid plagiarism the poet should both address the original source of the work and also take out more than fifty percent of the words. In Austin Kleon’s, the founder of blackout poetry, book “Steal Like an Artist” he addresses the concept that no idea is truly original. Inspiration has to stem from somewhere and it is never an idea that is uniquely your own. This clouds the divide between plagiarism and simply drawing inspiration from other authors. This is why blackout poetry is so unique, it allows you to add your experience to someone else’s work and make it truly your own, whether it is your original idea or not. Genres themselves group common pieces of work, many authors who drew ideas off pieces previously created in the same subset. Just like artist compare themselves to those who came before them, authors do the same. Genres may contain different voices or stylistic choices but the ideas are commonplace. Many fictional books have similar ties, such as science fiction novels.  Some science fictions novels for example draw from “Dianetics” by L. Ron Hubbard, the foundation of the Church of Scientology. They all stem from the ideas of one man and the authors took his thoughts and transformed them into their own interpretations based on Hubbard’s work. Just like genres and just like blackout poetry, intellectual property is fits into subsets and cannot truly be claimed as original, if it was it would more likely just be uninspired. Genres do not have a concrete set of standards; they have the ability to be a multitude of things. This can be seen through blackout poetry and how an author can work within the framework of someone else’s concepts and literal words to make something unique to them and their mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brewer, Robert L. “Erasure and Blackout Poems.” WritersDigestcom. N.p., 20 Nov. 2014. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.

Heibutzki, Ralph. “What Are Blackout Poems? | The Classroom | Synonym.”What Are Blackout Poems? The Classroom, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.

Pash, Adam. “Steal Like an Artist and Relax: Original Is Relative.” Lifehacker. Lifehacker, 08 Apr. 2011. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.