![]() The poem was printed like a scroll of cloth unfurling across the page each line of the typed text (all caps) was comprised of six letters, corresponding to the silkworm’s DNA. ![]() The second book I read was Silk Poems (Nightboat Books, 2017). Writing about this work in the afterword to Nets, she stated: “When we write poems, the history of poetry is with us, pre-inscribed in the white of the page.” This is the opposite of appropriation, a common postmodern practice. By leaving the source visible, she recognized that some of her poems would suffer by comparison. Shakespeare’s poems are still discernible in light blue text, while Bervin’s are in black readers can literally see the dialogue between the two poems. ![]() In contrast to earlier poets, such as Ronald Johnson and Jonathan Williams, who erased preexisting texts, Bervin did not completely efface her source. In that book, Bervin took 60 of William Shakespeare’s sonnets and erased them until the words that were left (exactly where they are in the original) became her poem. ![]() SAN FRANCISCO - I first learned about Jen Bervin when I read Nets (Ugly Duckling, 2003). ![]()
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