The above is the blacked-out poem from merging two legal documents’ extracts; HOWEVER the real poem is below, kept in the original word order but rearranged and embellished with punctuation and refrains:
commercial activity; industry, trade.
conserve, conserving, conservation; to the point no longer necessary.
census (enforcement.acquisition. propagation.trapping.
specific provisions; not the entire
wildlife kingdom; mammal/fish/bird/amphibian/reptile/mollusk/crustacean/arthropod/invertebrate{
part\product\egg\offspring\dead\body
person; individual/corporation/partnership
trust association/officer/employee/agent/department
Federal Government … State.
take = harass, harm pursue
hunt, shoot --> wound & kill
Do-not-resuscitate; cessation of respiration and circulation.
DECLARANT (provided by law)
I voluntarily execute this order. I understand its full import.
I authorize no person . I assume responsibility for its execution.
I assume responsibility for its execution.
WITNESS The Secretary determine;
endangered or threatened. destruction or curtailment. commercial or educational. disease or predation.
inadequacy of existing; The Secretary may [ ] critical habitat
if [ ] of such [ ] outweigh
[ ] of the [ ] concerned.
This is a poem derived from a blacked-out poem of two legal documents that have been extracted and combined in some form, namely the Endangered Species Act of 1973 that brackets the Do-Not-Resuscitate Advanced Directive of Michigan state. I wished to put together material that I found to be relevant in some way either metaphorically or literally. The former relates to my final project’s topic on Karner Blue butterfly endangerment (and provisional extinction in the Indiana Dunes) since it deals obviously with the matter of endangered invertebrates. Meanwhile, I found the document on the DNR Advance Directive to be somewhat metaphorical of leaving a dying species to die without any resuscitation from human beings, be it at a personal or policy level. Therefore, I found it productive to pull out segments of both legal documents that both confronted matters of defining and classifying the species, its habitat, and what made or who determined a species to be suited for saving, and also confronted the “will” of Nature for a creature to die out by natural selection.
In the process of making the blacked-out poem, I found that the final form of the poem was really interesting in that it presented an aesthetically appealing form of white highlighted words amidst a black background that I knew were also shrouding the mostly formal language of the documents. However, I took issue with the formless structure that was almost an arbitrary segment of the poetry, since I focused on finding buzzwords and phrases that stood out to me and meant significant and meaningful things. However, I wanted to address the form as well, and so I took inspiration from some of our readings last week and this week. Namely, the poem “Bear Me(a)t Styrene” inspired me in terms of using unconventional spacing and punctuation. Whereas also encouraged me to blank out certain words with square brackets despite being equally capable of retaining them as they were, hence explaining the last stanza. These words are taken out deliberately on my part; however, as part of the process of constructing the blacked-out poem form, there were certainly words there that I chose to have if only to subsequently nullify for ambiguity and an expansion of meaning.
Honestly, I am not sure if I have achieved a desired effect or any effect at all. But I was happy that where the poem did not seem to “flow” as well it was constrained not only by the necessary boundaries of this assignment, the legal jargon. Furthermore, I appreciated from our last class discussion the needlessness of “flow” in certain contexts: if anything, I even liked the staccato quality that the numerous punctuating effects brought.
This is the working document which has my original blacked-out poem but which I needed to rearrange for the poetry to work better, especially in terms spacing and punctuation. I have included a graphic below of the final product pre-processing as well at the very bottom of the working notes.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PvX26OCfZNEQctX2iu2-s35s9yqzT2-CZ23W-Kh5FpU/edit
These are the sources from which my legal documents were obtained:
Legislation for the Endangered Species Act:
https://www.fws.gov/endangered/esa-library/pdf/ESAall.pdf
Legally binding Do Not Resuscitate Advance Directive:
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdch/DNR_update_March_14_final_release_453815_7.pdf
