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.