Erasure poetry is made by taking an existing text and removing most of its words so that the remaining language forms a new poem. A poet may black out, cross out, white out, or otherwise hide the removed text, letting the selected words stand out. The result often creates a fresh voice, tension, or meaning from material that once served a different purpose.
Example
The report said the river was calm,
then warning, then flood,
then silence.
From the original page, the poet left only:
river calm
warning flood
silence