[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Originally Posted by Miya Ko

Curtis, I like the new poem to be related to the existing poem. It may contradict or support the existing one.

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.

Originally Posted by Miya Ko

Only using a poet's vocabulary to create a new text, I think, is easy. One can do that with a cookie recipe.

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.