“In a note that accompanies And Others, Vaguer Presences, the most recent collection of erasures by David Dodd Lee, he uses the phrase, “the poem wanting what the poem wants.” This statement curiously corroborates my impression that these poems were actually written by the poems themselves, which had definite ideas about what they wanted and didn’t want. It’s a strange feeling, being twice removed from one’s poems, strange and refreshing. I highly recommend Lee’s version of the poems’ poems.” –John Ashbery
Process:
The Ashbery erasure poems are works in which I subtract most of John Ashbery’s original verbiage, resulting in a “new” poem (erasure). Though the text is composed of already existing language, each erasure reflects my own aesthetic, philosophical, and autobiographical interests. The placement of text on each page is approximate to Ashbery’s own (very loosely) in this new work, but the new syntax suggests the emergence, often, of narrative threads that were not obvious in the original work. Arguments of ownership result, of course, but the erasures are created in the spirit of the collaborative. Tension results from the inconclusiveness regarding the intent in the creation of these erasures.
CITY AFTERNOON
A veil of haze
forgotten by
everybody
is sucked screaming
through
America
a last
fine
fleeting
garland
of light
in the
reflecting pool
from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
MYRTLE
How funny you would be
if you were
the first person
or
some other
person
named person It would
be like following a river to its source
Rivers
that appear
at a place
where they get
real
as someone already named
comes
along a person
a voice a she
thinking
I can do what I want to do
from The Best American Poetry 1994
THE LAUGHTER OF DEAD MEN
The store isn’t locked today
A syllabus is stenciled
on the moss-green highway
The suburbs look
dishonest
O nausea released
the dead men
smile
and climb toward a hermaphrodite
I like
hanging out to dry
But not the first-person singular
the singer it implies
from Wakefulness
WHAT ME?
Like sheets
or birdsong in the old days
an expansive atmosphere
a waiter
in a white jacket
who slams down the coffee cup
in front of you
then walks
on dog
excrement
Wow.
What a dumbass.
It’s like a chicken
remembering
ancient history.
And I like history.
from page 51 of Flow Chart
FORCE INSERTED ITSELF
I think like an ox’s
neck, without
warning relentlessly golden
lazy
nodules of form and splinter
confined in a ball.
I am a
wolf man
artificial legs everywhere
standing under umbrellas softly asking
only
to
be
let
back into the house.
from page
142 of Flow Chart
David Dodd Lee‘s Animalities was published in 2014. Unlucky Animals, a collection that includes original poems, collages, erasures and dictionary sonnets, will appear in early 2019. He is the author of ten books of poems and his artwork has been featured in three one-person exhibitions since 2014. Recent artwork has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, The Rumpus, and Twyckenham Notes. In 2016 he began making sculpture, most of which he installs on various public lands, surreptitiously. He lives on the St. Joseph River and teaches at Indiana University South Bend where he is Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press.