Here we are on the longest day of the year. Each night this week our dinner has gotten later and later. We have been drinking in the long evening light, staying outside as much as possible. I have been collecting the profusion of shades of green that will sooth my soul in the depth of winter when summer has been erased from my vision.
"First your life is erased, then you are erased. Don't tell me that
erasure is beside the point, an artsy fragment of the healthy whole. If
it is an appropriation, it is an appropriation of every life that has
preceded your own, just as those in the future will appropriate yours;
they will appropriate your very needs, your desires, your gestures, your
questions, and your words.
"First your life is erased, then you are erased. Don't tell me that
erasure is beside the point, an artsy fragment of the healthy whole. If
it is an appropriation, it is an appropriation of every life that has
preceded your own, just as those in the future will appropriate yours;
they will appropriate your very needs, your desires, your gestures, your
questions, and your words.
Or so I believe. And I am glad. What is the alternative? A blank page.
I am all the book remembers of itself."
-Mary Ruefle "On Erasure"
Mary Ruefle creates "erasure poetry," in which she takes an existing text and redacts the majority by cutting/deleting/painting over/scribbling out, leaving behind a minimalist poem.
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