‘Nets’ is a collection of
poems where author Jen Bervin has used erasure on selected sonnets by William
Shakespeare, using them as a canvas to draw out her own unique poetry.
My personal favorite is the
erasure done on sonnet number 63 to produce the following poem-
I am
Vanished or vanishing
In these black lines
This was one of the poems
that stayed with me long after I had read the collection of poems. It is an
extremely short poem in free verse- that is, it does not have any set meter or
rhyme scheme. What I loved about this was that despite how small and concise
this poem was, every time I read it, I got something different out of it. The
first time I read it, I pictured being lost in woods- it was a powerful image,
and it stayed with me. Each time I read it after that, I interpreted it
differently, but the feeling of being lost or being consumed by some unknown
thing remained constant. That feeling was what I enjoyed most about reading the
poem. I have always been a fan of erasure poetry because it’s interesting to
see how a poet can draw out something completely different from the intended
meaning of the original text. However, when I read sonnet number 63 by itself,
I discovered that Jen Bervin’s poem stood in consonance with what the sonnet
was about- the erasure work stood with it as opposed to against it. In sonnet
number 63, Shakespeare talks about how he is fighting time to immortalize his lover
through his poetry—so that when time overcomes his lover-when he becomes old,
he would still stay young “in the black lines” of Shakespeare’s poetry. The
black lines are what keeps Shakespeare’s lover immortal- forever young through
time. I pictured the lines as this black liquid that traps Shakespeare’s lover
in cryogenic sleep. So, when I read Jen Bervin’s poem against the
background of Shakespeare’s sonnet- I felt that she had distilled the essence
of what Shakespeare was trying to say. The “I” in the poem was Shakespeare’s
love that was being slowly consumed by the black lines, to be forever preserved
in black cryogenic sleep with his lover. The woods that I imagined were
Shakespeare’s words; the woods were the black sleep. The sense of uncertainty
in the line, “vanished or vanishing” agreed with the feeling of being lost in
the woods. However this is just my interpretation of Bervin’s poem.
As someone who loves to
write, the lines also spoke to me because they echoed what I feel about great
writing- that is the kind of writing that a writer can disappear/vanish into-
that completely envelops the writer- so that the words on the paper and the
writer become one.
The erasure work done in ‘Nets’
by Bervin is excellent and the poems though short are powerful and though
provoking.
-Smriti Bansal
Works Cited
Bervin, Jen. Nets. New York:
Ugly Ducklinge, 2004. Print.
I love the temporality of this poem, the idea of preservation behind the sonnet that is pulled through into the poem. I almost find it ironic, since the "preservation" of Shakespeare's ink takes hold because his words are being read, but then the preservation is twisted into something new and, perhaps, horrifying in the light of the structuralist original form. The idea behind these poems in almost appropriation, and this poem specifically talks about trying to keep things as they are.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that you chose to copy the poem into the text of your post without formatting it the same as it was formatted in the book. I'd like to know if you think the form, the placing of the words on the physical page, is important to this poem? In any of Bervin's poetry? Does the bone structure of the sonnet underneath each of Bervin's poems add meaning to her work or is it merely coincidental?
This is a really strong close reading, Smriti, and one of your best responses to date. You make some very important points about the connection between Bervin's Net 63 and Shakespeare's Sonnet 63. We'll discuss these pieces more closely in class.
ReplyDeleteLike Tori, I'd like to know more about what you think of the placement of the words on the physical page, since you've removed formatting in your excerpt here.
I agree with you and Tori about the temporality of the poem. I really enjoy how so much time is preserved and represented in such short and simple, yet incredibly complex poems. Poems like these are possibly the reasons I cannot interpret poems as well as I would like to. Like you said, I got different meaning out of the poem every time I read it. Although I am still not sure what the definite meaning of the poem would be, I enjoy how beautiful and delicate the words sound, and create such a separate universe.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Tori that the form of the poem is extremely important to the poem itself. Reading Net Number 63 in the book the way it was written was a different experience from reading Net Number 63 in your reading response. You didn’t do anything wrong - it just struck out to me how much its form matters to the poem.
I strongly agree with your interpretation and analysis of Net 63, and I really liked the way that you went about comparing and contrasting of Net 63 and Sonnet 63. I thought it strengthened your reaction a lot because you backed up your thoughts and ideas with evidence from both poems and gave your analysis solid ground to stand on. I interpreted the poem in a similar manner as you did, only, instead of imagining being lost in the woods, I imagined myself walking and falling into the black lines when I stepped on them, kind of like Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner do. But, even though my imagination took me to a different place, I had the same lost feeling you described when I read the poem. Like Daniel, I also enjoyed the beauty of the words and how they flowed together. I loved how this short poem was powerful enough to be able to take readers away from their physical surroundings and to wherever each individual person imagines that they would feel the loneliest.
ReplyDelete