Bervin & Shakespeare

Jen Bervin’s poems in Nets were created by directly using words from Shakespeare’s sonnets. In the book, the original sonnets are muted, yet still visible in the background, wrapping around her bolded words. Despite her clear acquisition of Shakespeare’s works, Nets can still be read independently from the sonnets. Nets takes on a completely different form and carries distinct tones and meanings. She subjectively chooses what she thinks are the most important words of Shakespeare’s sonnets and in doing so creates a completely new meaning.

Like the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, Bervin takes already-made works and modifies them to create original poetry. This is not plagiarism because both Duchamp and Bervin created new thoughts and meanings in their works. In Bervin’s artistic and poetic process, she creates original, creative poetry and gives new meaning to the original sonnets.

In Scott Howard’s review of Nets, "roses no such roses": Jen Bervin's Nets and the Sonnet Tradition from Shakespeare to the Postmoderns,” he calls it a “double-gesture of tribute and transgression”. She makes the “fading English sonnet form” transforms it into “an emerging so-called postmodernist line”. This is an eloquent description of how Bervin’s utilization of Shakespeare both pays homage to him and his beautiful language, while she also creating completely original work through her erasure technique. A fitting example of this is in sonnet 135:

                                                                        Will,

            Will                                    Will

                        will           

                                    will

                                                            will

            will

                        will

                                                Will                                    Will

            Will                                                                        Will

                                                                                                            Will

This poem is completely different from the original sonnet. It is ambiguous. It could be understood as recognizing William Shakespeare, it could also be the noun ‘will,’ as in will-power, or it could express the future tense. This poem emphasizes the number of times ‘will’ is said in this sonnet. Personally, it is also expresses a somewhat overwhelming, eerie repetition.

All creative products, whether it be art, literature, poetry, music, films, toys etc, are rooted in historical and social contexts. As artist Wassily Kandinsky put it in his essay “From Concerning the Spiritiaul in Art” in 1911, “every work of art is the child of its time” (Kandinsky, 83). Regardless of Bervin’s utilization of Shakespeare, her works fit the style of post-modernism because she wrote it in the present day. Her work is the product of the present, not of the 16^th century. Furthermore, to relevantly quote Shakespeare, “nothing comes from nothing” (King Lear). Creative works do not come from a blank, objective slate. They are the result of the creator’s response to their reality and their self, which belong to a specific time and place in history and society. Bervin clearly agrees with this too: “When we write poems, the history of poetry is with us,” (Nets). Bervin demonstrates this directly and literally by showing her readers that she was inspired by Shakespeare by keeping the poems cloudy in the background of her poems.

Bervin, Jen. Nets. Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004. Print.

Howard, W. Scott. "'roses no such roses': Jen Bervin's Nets and the Sonnet Tradition from Shakespeare to the Postmoderns." Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004.

http://www.webdelsol.com/Double_Room/issue_five/Jen_Bervin.html

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood. Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2003. Print.