[William A. Baurle]

Me:

I haven't read the source text, but will get to it soon...

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.

[Ann Drysdale]

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

[Steve Bucknell]

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

[John Whitworth]

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

[Rob Stuart]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

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.

[John Whitworth]

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.

[Steve Bucknell]

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

That Noth is excellent, reminds me of Morgenstern.

[Steve Bucknell]

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

[Brian Allgar]

John:

Nothing is so beautiful as spring?

What about a
xxxthinxxxxxxbeautifulxass?


(Sorry to lower the tone.)

[Rob Stuart]

Originally Posted by Brian Allgar

John:

Nothing is so beautiful as spring?

What about a
xxxthinxxxxxxbeautifulxass?


(Sorry to lower the tone.)

Nothing is so beautiful as spring?