A blessing
 

Me: Well, I've just discovered Mary Austin, and that's hands-down the best thing that's happened thus far in this erasure experiment. How can I have not heard of this person? The area she wrote about is close to the Mohave Desert, where I've lived since 1988.

My opinion on erasures done from pages of prose ripped out of novels? I don't see as there's any real harm done, but I'd prefer to stick to poems, and masterful ones at that. And, if you're going to tackle prose from a published author, maybe take on the whole thing, like Yedda Morrison did? Or at least a big chunk of it. If I were to take on Melville's Moby-Dick, looking for poems, or one long poem, I'd be busy for years, maybe decades. Hell, the whole damn thing is a beautiful poem. Far more beautiful than a good deal of his poetry. And let's not even get into Mardi, that sadly neglected wonderwork.

These are just my immediate thoughts and emotions. I'm far more interested in Mary's work now than anything we the living are busy with at present. Have you seen her face? What a face! Imposing, strong, defiant. If I met up with her in a saloon out here I sure wouldn't look at her funny.

Here I am, still squeaking behind the wainscot, as I was at post 4 on the "other" thread. There I waited, and observed.

In a poetic sense this technique has the merry overtones of a brand new creative tool. Like getting a Dremel for Christmas. But you can wreck things with it, too. Cynicism and irony are add-ons in the bottom of the box, under the bit of paper that tells you how to wire the plug. They are waiting for the moment when you've mastered the tool, when the element of discovery shows the way to serving an agenda.

I made this so as to show you what I mean. I have used a Wikipedia entry and squeezed the juice out so I could spit the pips at you.

Redaction

editing
multiple texts
combined
xxxxxxxaltered
 slightly
single document
definitive

Later

Selecting
adapting
obscuring
removing

Euphemism

conceal
censor
destroy

Eraserheads
 

I spent most of yesterday at the Poetry Business workshop in Sheffield. The morning was taken up with poetry prompts and exercises, the afternoon with reading and critiquing our own poems (one you've brought or one you've written that morning.) As Curtis wrote, the point of exercises like these is " the challenge of finding that coherence, and that something new...... Forcing the mind out of normal habits of thinking."

I know the majority of the poets there share my own grumpy scepticism, that voice in the head that says "I can't do this. I don't want. I can't write to order. Certainly not in a room stuffed with thirty other poets." It's strange how the speed and skill of Peter and Ann's prompts dissolve those feelings. You are forced to write in rapid bursts as the prompts are switched. Some of the results that are read out are astonishing: bursts of images on the way to becoming poems.

One thing I do notice is that I, and other poets I know still tend to sound like ourselves. Mannerisms, vocabulary, syntax, favourite images tend to come up when you're pushed to write quickly. Nevertheless I think that these exercises work well when they edge us out of our usual comfort zones.

In the same spirit I wanted to try this erasure experiment. I found it more difficult than just taking off from a one or two line prompt. The Wave texts look like chunks of stone you have to chip away to find a shape in. I abandoned three before I found the Molly one I could complete.

I felt dismissive of what I had produced yesterday, but I am more interested in it today. I like the idea of a poem about the word "nice", its uses and abuses. I like the section "God didn't want to see" which, as Bill points out has some potential theological threads I could follow. (It reminded me of the way Kavanagh talks about and teases God in his later poems, always with an underlying reverence).

In summary I think Erasure is a process of treating a text that can produce interesting results. It can force us to organise and use language in ways that are new to us. I think most of the time the writer will try and find something that sounds like himself/herself. I think you could already look at what people have produced here and say " you can see Martin/Bill/Ann/Steve in what they've written.

It would be pushing it too far, for me, to think of an Erasure poem as an end-in-itself. It would be like telling the participants at the workshop to throw away all they'd written before because the quickly written , instinctively produced stuff was the Real Thing. (that sounds like a good idea for a Cult.)

Steve

Noth

Nothing is so beautiful as spring
Nothing is so beautiful as pring
Nothing is so beautiful as ping
Nothing is so beautiful as pin
Nothing is so beautiful as pi
Nothing is so beautiful as p
Nothing is
Nothing
Noth

Daft as a brush. I love it.

Why thank you, Rob. I just let the inner Whitworth speak. Noth is a wizard, as I'm sure you know. Not a good person

Do you know the last line of Nabokov's Bend Sinister.

A fine night for mothing.

Officious persons rushed to correct the typo. Nabokov, a noted lepidopterist, stayed stumm.

In that ancient forest between Sheffield and Doncaster.
 

Ah, the Wizard of the Noth. I am setting to work on Ivanhoe Erased immediately.

That Noth is excellent, reminds me of Morgenstern.

Where's the poem?
 

Bill,

Your explication of your erasure poem is dramatic and involving:

"What I was trying to do was pit the boxes against one another: the three dimensional, actual box, and the door, which according to the box's POV is two dimensional, and therefore strange and forbidding, right off the bat. I see the door closed and the box up against it, maybe to keep the door from opening on its own? I had a bedroom door with no lock in an apartment for several years, and I did just that: I placed a heavy box full of books right against the door, so that if someone (some drunken Tortilla Flat kind of pseudo-friend, not Mexican but as white and trashy as I was at that time) should come barging in on me I'd at least have some noise or a second's hesitation to warn me of the intrusion."

The erasure poem you make is dull, abstract, undramatic, uninvolving and opaque. This explication, the memory it touches on is the stuff you need to work with: vivid raw material and drama which communicates powerful feeling. That's where the poetry is.

Steve

John:

Nothing is so beautiful as spring?

What about a
xxxthinxxxxxxbeautifulxass?


(Sorry to lower the tone.)

Nothing is so beautiful as spring?

Yorkshierasure
 

o thin beautifulass !

Rob, is that your bottom-fetishism causing you to weep?

From the text of The History of the Gatling Gun Detachment

The Door

The old who had just reached it
pushing to each side
the already taken.
Smoke was the momentum,
the crowd falling over each other.
Detachment of mind

in the blue smoke. The outcry
started in at the door,
as the fire seized
which happened to be near

The people/casts of ashes
 

Donna,

This seems very effective to me. A tableau of panic and 'detachment' . The clipped syntax transmits the hurry of action and perception.I like the use of the euphemism 'the already taken', as if the narrator can't say, can't look. Without me having to do too much work it conjures an intense scene.

Interesting that this seems to connect with your previous 'Vesuvius' and 'Pompeii' erasure, as though an unconscious need to make these images keeps pushing through the texts you have chosen. Is that just coincidence?

Steve

Another go at it....

At the End

I: After the Bank Heist

The same day,
as the sparkle of hours
tarnished
in the long, dull, distributed ago,
there were two
young men engaged in silence.
The silence curled
round decayed sounds:
now, now, now —
just in the eyes,
a thicket of theories.


II: Adam Lanza

There are
sons compelled to hold themselves
until they conform
to the dead —
perhaps the remote
beyond,
single-purposed and beatified
were so —


III: Burning Witch

When we met
first
she was angry.

She had words
in the first
place for torches:

they were the days,
the gods,
defrauded.

And then, when
observing and laughing, this:
Be gods thus:

Better
spend the days
of life.


IV: Below the Titanic

We listened to shouting
with all our strength.

If need finally sounded so near
our hearts grew fainter.

Soon
the whistle of thought and perishing

stopped
what might come.


V: To Be Continued

Frolicking, always,
this world,
through whatever happens.

Mothers and nests
decide the world.


_________________________

Notes:

After the Bank Heist: from The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf: http://erasures.wavepoetry.com/erasures.php?sourceid=3

Adam Lanza: from Youth Challenges, Clarence B Kelland: http://erasures.wavepoetry.com/erasures.php?sourceid=15

Burning Witch: from Clouds, Aristophanes: http://erasures.wavepoetry.com/erasures.php?sourceid=14

Below the Titanic: from Out of the Fog, C.K. Ober: http://erasures.wavepoetry.com/erasures.php?sourceid=13

To Be Continued: from The Melting of Molly, Maria Thompson Daviess: http://erasures.wavepoetry.com/erasures.php?sourceid=6

Donna,

I read that as door=death and also "door into heaven". Hell is approaching near. Was that your intent? Very interesting.

Raise the Titanic
 

Curtis,

A tour de force. I like the way the titles direct the reader into each section. The overarching ‘At the End’ seems to speak of the study of last things. The only title I don’t buy into is ‘After the Bank Heist’; the image of ‘two/young men engaged in silence’ is so strong I want the title to key into their story or identity in a stronger way. A sense of time, decay and silence in the tarnished here and now exists in these words.

I get the title reference in the second stanza, and the sense here of trying to describe something beyond the power of language. The words trail off, unable to complete the sense they are trying to make.

The third stanza: ‘Burning Witch’ offers affirmation: a female shaman leading the way with words, torches, laughter and a powerful, didactic injunction: Be gods thus:Better spend the daysof life.

The fourth stanza ‘Below the Titanic’ reminds me of Enzensberger’s The Sinking of the Titanic. The way thoughts of disaster get us through the long nights, or ‘stopped/what might come’.

The sinking of the Titanic proceeds according to plan ...
It is 100% tax-deductible.
It is a lucky bag for poets ...
It is better than nothing ...
It has a solid working-class basis.
It arrives in the nick of time ...
It is a breathtaking spectacle . Enzensberger.

The last stanza: ‘To be Continued’ strikes a positively joyful note, ‘Frolicking’ and a vision of continuity : ‘Mothers and nests/decide the world.’ It contradicts the ‘At the End’ nicely.

All in all I think you’ve put together strong images and framed and structured them well. If I saw this blind in a magazine I’d be impressed.

Steve.

Thanks for the feedback, Steve. I really didn't put much effort into it, and that alone is bad practice. You get out what you put in. I think I was trying to work on the paranoia I got from Curtis's poem and distill even further. But you are right, and your point is well taken. It's good to see people having a go at this and not being too put off by it.

Thanks, Steve.

My thought when writing the first section: The two young men were the robbers; after the rush of the robbery, and getting away—many hours later—they are faced with a new situation as they contemplate what to do about each other, each realizing that the other may be considering the same question.

It was only after posting that I thought it could be read at least a couple other ways. E.g., perhaps they had killed some people during the heist (unplanned) or maybe they were contemplating their new state as fugitives, how they were going to navigate their future, and perhaps the likelihood of being killed while being on the run.

Any of these three would concern death: as either option, likelihood or what had been caused earlier in the day.

I wrote the sections in order. W/ the first section, I had not quite conceived of the whole motif for the piece, and maybe this comes through in the indeterminacy of "what is going on" there.

Incidentally, I think it was only the last section where I didn't go w/ the first original text I decided to erase. I mean: The others, I picked one and began erasing, but with the last one I had to look at two or three before I found a way to close the poem. Fuzzy now, I don't quite remember how I picked the originals.

The evening before I started erasing these, I had decided to see what might happen if I had more than one original source, of those small sources available at the Wave site, because each was quite limiting alone. My general thought is that the erasure process removes context and that "found coherence" and "something new" might be produced as a process of creating new context; and, context might be created in various ways:

• word choice
• adding punctuation (sentence construction)
• typographical emphasis (italics)
• lineation choices
• using multiple original source texts
• breaking into sections
• creating titles for sections and whole

I.e., the process of using erasure to create something new is about replacing one context with other context.

You read the poem pretty much as I intended, except for maybe the first section.

Finger-Dance from the Monkey's Olivetti

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are Dreamt of in your philosOph.,y

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreaMt of in your philosophy

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philos,ophy

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosOph.y

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in Your philosophy

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt, of in your philosophy

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy

There are more things in heaven and eart,h, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy

There are more things in heaven and eart.h, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

THere are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in you.r philosophy.

There are more things in Heaven' and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in you?r philosophy

There Are more, things in heaven and earth, Horatio
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I like that, Orwn.

The only thing I don't quite get is "A more," and I wonder if a) "A" is supposed to be a shortened form of "and" or that typical Shakespearean "he" or b) it's a type of abbreviated Elizabethan closing for letters...

"Haven't you?" seems an aside to Hamlet standing by; but if this is a letter, that wouldn't seem right unless Horatio is speaking the letter as he writes it for Hamlet and stops to check....If so, I wonder if it should be in parentheses. But if "A more" is a closing, then why would it be signed "Horatio?" (I've thought that maybe Horatio is saying all of the above for himself, not for Hamlet, though...)

"A more, Horatio" might be Hamlet's response to Horatio's question "Haven't you?"

Those are my only stumbling blocks.

The title is very funny but diminishes the poem a little.

Sneaking into the enemy camp and hoping no one notices.

Isn't "a more" really "amore" = love? And isn't this a pun on the infinite monkey theorem.

It is clever, Walter, you are a fiendishly clever young man.

But poetry, it ain't.

Ah, I hadn't considered that.

After leaving my comment, I started wondering if this was merely a conversation between Ophelia and Horatio, and the section merely a way of saying that Hamlet dreamt more of Horatio than Ophelia has:

THere are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in you.r philosophy.
There are more things in Heaven' and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in you?r philosophy

There Are more, things in heaven and earth, Horatio
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Ophelia: He dreamt of you.
Horatio: Haven't you?
Ophelia: A more, Horatio. ["He more, Horatio."]

—going by the frequency of "a" in Elizabethan speech, and in Shakespeare's plays, to mean "he."

But knowing where/whether the speaker switches from Horatio to Ophelia would be hard in this case.

And part of Walter's cleverness.

The Poet
 

The Poet

In the third act,
a recital of a dream,
struk by its beauty
a cobbler poet
finds the song
in a meadow
between F and Nuremberg.

It begins as specticle,
poetry, or music
monstrously sung
and condemned him
as love had prompted.
The old poet discourses,
the guild of mastersingers.


[Original: A Book of Operas by Henry Edward Kreehbiel]
http://erasures.wavepoetry.com/erasures.php?sourceid=11

Of course it's poetry. If he says it is I trust him. And, Astrid, yours is poetry too.

Fitzcarraldo
 

Astrid,

I like the idea of a "cobbler poet"; who would that be? The odd, missing 'c' in "struk" and the odd, appearing 'i' in "specticle" add to the comic confusion. "The Poet" puts me in mind of many of us here on the Sphere. I think you could tighten the ending by erasing that last line.

Steve.

John, you might also enjoy this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOCFN...Hbd ZNuNTXEmv

I do, somewhat more than erasure poetry. :)

I am sneaking out of the camp and back to my base, now. Enjoy.

"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare."

Actually, Janice, I am more convinced by the alternative "infinite Shakespeare" theorem which states that:

"William Shakespeare, hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time, will almost surely type the complete works of a monkey."

And Brian spoke forth with winged words, and his words flew.

(Ah, I wish I had thought of that, but how fortunate that you did.)

My Advice To Youth



Friendly Advice to a Lot of Young Men

By Charles Bukowski

Go to Tibet
Ride a camel.
Read the bible.
Dye your shoes blue.
Grow a beard.
Circle the world in a paper canoe.
Subscribe to The Saturday Evening Post.
Chew on the left side of your mouth only.
Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a straight razor.
And carve your name in her arm.

Brush your teeth with gasoline.
Sleep all day and climb trees at night.
Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.
Hold your head under water and play the violin.
Do a belly dance before pink candles.
Kill your dog.
Run for mayor.
Live in a barrel.
Break your head with a hatchet.
Plant tulips in the rain.

But don’t write poetry.


PS Curtis, if this is unacceptable, I'll delete it. I call it "Strikethrough Poetry", which is more respectful to/of authors.

I finally created a decent one!
 

That erasures site is great, actually. I used their translation of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. I think it sums up how I feel about Kant.

negative feeling is pathological
like every feeling
consciousness
is humiliation
the law is There is no
feeling
the moral law reasons together a moral

Well, I don't think it is "indecent", and though I can appreciate its attraction to professional philosophers, I don't think it is poetry.

Philosophy seldom, if ever, is poetry though the two are possibly kin, having, in some distant past, the same Lucy-mother who had a notion that one can do more with language than inform and ask questions like "pass the salt".

indecent attraction
poetry

Philosophy is possibly
more than questions


(Yeah, I'm too tired to argue about what counts as what genre.)

That is a clever eraser you have there, gal!

The Critique of Pure Feeling
 

From the Wave text The Critique of Practical Reasoning, with 'Feelings' by Gasté /Albert intervened.


The Critique of Pure Feeling

The effect on feeling is pathological—
--Feelings, nothing more than feelings—
Every influence on feeling and every feeling—
--Trying to forget my feelings of love—
Of consciousness and cause, namely—
--Teardrops rolling down on my face—
Being affected by inclinations is called—
--Trying to forget my feelings of love—
The positive source.

There is a feeling for this as it removes—
--Feelings, for all my life I’ll feel it—
Resistance out of the way, this is a help—
--I wish I’d never met you girl—
Therefore this feeling may be called---
--You’ll Never Come Again—
A feeling of feeling.
--Feelings, whoa-whoa-whoa feelings.

Kant/ Gasté /Albert/Bucknell.

Miya,

We had a similar example earlier, of a very simplistic erasure. All it takes is finding one two-word phrase one wants to be the message—and erase all else! I don't know what great value such a procedure may have, other than a quick-hit expostulation of a polemic value.

Themselves Alone

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

Curtis, I like the new poem to be related to the existing poem. It may contradict or support the existing one. Only using a poet's vocabulary to create a new text, I think, is easy. One can do that with a cookie recipe. The idea is also to expose the existing poem for reading and the new poem as the profound reaction of the second poet to the existing poem. I'm all for respecting poets. The most difficult part of this poetic exercise is finding the right poem.

Miya


Like this:



My Wish For My Eulogy


Death & Fame

By Allen Ginsberg

When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But l want a big funeral
St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in
Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother
96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-
in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters
their grandchildren,
companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche,
there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting
America, Satchitananda Swami
Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche,
Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms
Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau
Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century
Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich
young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each
other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousand
day retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he
loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly
arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my
skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my bum with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then
sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed nude with anyone before, he was so gentle my
stomach
shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen nipple to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth
& fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-
gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997
and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender
and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head,
my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my prick,
tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged
chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a
pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his
walk-up flat,
seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him
again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made
sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock
star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-
ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-
peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger
fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-
harp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India,
Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman Massa-
chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty
sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American
provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-
philes, sex liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either sex
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved
him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me
from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my
studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas
City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized
others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-
graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural
historians come to witness the historic funeral
Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-
hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased
who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive.

I think you should keep looking, Miya.

Miya,

I think that's certainly one way to go about it. Even non-erasure and non-strike-out poems can be conversations w/ past works, past poets. The type of erasure poem that leaves what has been "erased" visible, for instance in a lighter-colored font, or that is easily discerned as an erasure poem (perhaps of a familiar work; see the Shakespeare above), is another way of showing that conversation between the past work and the present.

But I'm not at all convinced that is the only way to do it or the only good goal.

Miya, when you write in English, you are using my vocabulary; and vice versa.

It is terribly "easy" to write English words down and call the new text a poem—much more difficult to do so well. I think this is true whether the process used is erasure or the normal mode of picking out vocabulary from one's own memory.

One point of this exercise may be merely to learn a process for shaking up our normal use of vocabulary, our normal thinking patterns. E.g., one could go back and "erase" one's own prose, perhaps—the process isn't reserved for erasing the works of others. Then all these gold-hearted comments about "respect" would be moot, right?

Curtis.