so his or itoday's erasure has me mulling over my treated-text habits. as you can see, i'm obsessed with exposing persona and possession when i erase. i'm also big on repetition, and i love digging out small, oft-used words.
"hose my"
but i as i text
as he we now my
we us i
2 us law
know he petit
as we as we
aching he cut rod
woman i land 14
my me or oat
test free i
he ten hit or
or at at o
so i ate as we lean
so i 26
if he
"hose my"
be,
a.raw
armchair psychology, anyone?
TANGENT #1: i recall browsing poetry shelves in an evil chain bookstore several years ago, and jotting down each instance of a title constructed thusly:
The _____ of _____why is this such a popular "poetry" title construct?
TANGENT #2: i'll sometimes go through my own texts and highlight if, and, or, the... i was fascinated with the number of times or and of appeared as connective tissue in scientific syntax while i researched LOGYoLOGY. i even bold-faced these words in an index in 2001.
TANGENT #3: thinking about this more and more, i just can't shake my obsession with the minute. wide slumber's fifth segment is chockfull of dissecting and inspecting the wee. the becomes th; and becomes nd. minute under microscope, surfaced, present. in fact a torrent a flutter or frenzy "of 'a' or 'th': th 'of' of 'a' or 'th' of 'or' / a 'th' of th 'th' or th 'of' or th 'a'."
THE POINT OF THE POST: can anyone recommend a solid essay/article/book on the history of treated text? i'm thinking of something that documents/discusses the poetics of ronald johnson's radi os, tom phillips' a humument, erasure exercises, plunderverse, etc. etc. etc. greg touches on a history in his "cartographic manifesto"; anyone have pointers for other texts?
also, who wants to edit the wikipedia entry on erasure poetry?
6 comments:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/mediawork/titles/writing/
writing_book.html
this book, writing machines, doesn't cover that exactly per se, but does cover how writing and technology intersect historically, so it is related.
also, specifically to a humument, johanna drucker's a history of artists books is really good
(side note) print ready photo by monday, perhaps?
Oh, I could also use those resources.
Aren't this post and three of the four comments from about a year ago?
yes, thanks for noticing, mark. i rewrote this a bit and then reposted (as i'm still hunting for requested resources). much of my archived blog content was offline for 2007, and i've only recently started considering how and what to repost.
this was my first attempt at reviving something from the archives to give it front-page prominence. perhaps it should include a note at the outset saying it's been repositioned in that way? or perhaps comments associated with initial post should be removed if it re-enters circulation?
That poem on wikipedia needs replacement badly.
Shall we both try our hands & see what we come up with? Using the Main page, as the original does.
Angela,
Nyppoesi recently published some of Fred Hertzberg's translations of Gunnar Bjorling, from the book Action Books published a few months ago. To my mind Bjorling is still the most intersting erasure-iste. The Humament feels precious to me. Also, Bjorling is very much interested in repeating some of the same words you are compelled by - very simple words (the, is etc). Also, his young boyfriends did a lot of the erasing for him. During WWII a bomb accidentally hit his place(he kept his manuscripts in the bathtub) and burned up most of the manuscripts - but Bjorling realized it was a fine erasure... but he was doing this decades ago, starting in the late 1920s.
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