Minimalism of Nets

I’ve never been very good at deciphering poetry, which is probably why Jen Bervin’s poem collections “Nets,” published in 2004, proved to be quite a challenge for me. Bervin uses Shakespeare’s timeless sonnets in this work of hers, graying out the majority of each sonnet and leaving about five or six words in normal print to create her own short poems. 

The idea of using erasures to leave her audience with something new struck me as brilliant. The way Bervin makes use of Shakespeare’s work brings the image of a sculptor to mind; she has removed much of a slab of marble to reveal something new to the world – but the great risk she has taken here is that said slab is a work that already stands on its own as a milestone in history. This is comparable to taking Michelangelo’s La Pieta and somehow reducing it to a totally different piece! Bervin was very brave to do this, but as we all know, with great risk comes great reward.

An aspect of each of Bervin’s poems that beguiled me was the extent to which she reduced Shakespeare’s sonnets. Using usually less than ten words from a piece of at least one hundred, Bervin seems to have discarded most of the backdrop piece. I can understand that she perhaps did not want Shakespeare’s concrete presence in her work to overpower her words, or perhaps she did not want readers that were very familiar with Shakespeare’s works to only see how the words she chose connected to what Shakespeare once formed for his audience. What marvels me, however, is just how effective using what only seemed like ten percent of the sonnets was. While reading through Bervin’s anthology, I did not once think of the 16^th century playwright and the influence he’s had on American literature. I took her words for what they were, and what they could possibly stand for in present times.

I also admire the use of the title “Nets,” which is taken quite cleverly from the title “Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” I like this title because the image of a net is for me one of bare minimum; a net is a very basic, minimalistic, yet effective tool that captures or holds captive a desired object. This is a perfect analogy for Bervin’s short poems, for they do capture the reader’s attention via minimalist means.

My favorite of the poem collection was the erasure of sonnet 22, as shown below.

 

As an amateur poetry-reader I summed up the poem within the first few reads, immediately focusing on the word ‘time’ as the big theme of the poem. But as I tried to delve more into what perhaps Bervin wanted her audience to see, I realized that these few words could go several different ways.

To me these eight words are emphasizing the fact that each and every one of us on Earth is ‘from’ one date, possibly meaning born on a single date, and yet from this piece I get a sense of not only the beginning of my life but the end. I like the fact that Bervin chose to keep ‘furrows’ where she could have ended the poem after ‘time.’ The former word gives a sense of the endlessness, or abundance of time (I think of a string bunched together to look like one simple entity, but that can be stretched out infinitely), and the word ‘one’ shows just how small we are compared to the entire span of time.

I don’t think I could ever pull off erasure for fear of having my backdrop piece overpowering what I am singling out from it, but Bervin does a marvelous job.

Works Cited

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

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.

The stars, the selfsame sky, [all] for [my] love of you.

                Nets by Jen Bervin is a collection of erasures. Her canvas are a collection of about 150 sonnets by William Shakespeare. The erasures, as Bervin says, “make the space of the poems open, porous, possible – a divergent elsewhere” (151). They make reading the poems truly a unique experience. In this essay, I will discuss the relationship of the erasure to the sonnet while focusing on one of these erasures. The erasure I chose comes from Skaepeare’s sonnet 15.

the stars

                                                     the selfsame sky

                                                for love of you.

                The above erasure is a short  poem of three equally short lines. Most of the erasures follow this pattern and I was tempted to call some of them haikus, and I actually believe they are. According to Shadow Poetry, a haiku does not necessarily mean that there has to be a 5/7/5 syllable structure. Actually, the other definition as mentioned here (http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/haiku/haiku.html), defines a haiku as a poem that contains seventeen syllables or less. Furthermore, the page goes on to outline the structure of the haiku where the first line is the setting and the remaining two lines are the subject and the action. So in a sense, Bervin’s erasures, as seen in this case, can be argued to be haikus. What I find most convincing is that the erasures do not have more the seventeen syllables.

                However, the setting, subject and action do not necessarily appear in that order. I would say the setting is the sky; the subject is the stars; the action is the love. I guess this is the restriction of dealing with erasure but clearly, Bervin did try to achieve a form similar to that of a haiku.

                The meaning of Bervin’s erasure, to me, is quite straight forward. But there seems to be something lacking. It speaks of the stars, and sky that the stars are in. Yet, somehow, they are related to the love of someone, as if something about the stars and the sky, dictate or influence the love. I think, this is where Bervin’s erasures begin to relate to the sonnets, and this is why I chose this particular one.

                In this sonnet, Shakespeare talks about how time ages someone, taking away their youth (“Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,/ To change your day of youth to sullied night”).  And the stars seem to flaunt their youth in the face of men and plants. And on seeing this youth, they decide that they too want to grow with Time under the same sky as the stars (Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;/ When I perceive that men as plants increase,/ Cheered and checked even by the selfsame sky”). Unfortunately, men fall prey to this mockery of the stars and Time takes away their youth. But Shakespeare believes that that even though his love grow old, he will immortalize this person, possibly in the form of the sonnets. I would probably say it is seen in the following two sonnets where Shakespeare continues his discussion of Time and aging(16), and continuing in Sonnet 18 to describe a young maiden.

                It can be seen, that standing alone, Bervin’s erasures seem so, “open.” The erasure clearly sets up the subject, setting and action yet does not give the relationship between the three. This leaves the poem very much up to how the reader will interpret it, rather than how Shakespeare intended.

Nets

Nets by Jen Bervin is an erasure of sixty of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The title itself is an erasure, as it is presented on the title page as

“THE SONNETS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE”

The collection appears this way as well, with the full sonnets shadowing Bervin’s product. “Nets,” however, is not simply the second half of “sonnets.” As W. Scott Howard explains in his review of Nets, Bervin’s practice of “netting…establishes the importance of the volume’s visual field of signification, which literally and metaphorically nets the sonnets, lifting the language off of the page” (Howard).

One of these nets that spoke to me particularly was Bervin’s take on Shakespeare’s sonnet #13:

O! that you were yourself; but, love, you are
No longer yours, than you yourself here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give:
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again after yourself’s decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day
And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?
   O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
   You had a father: let your son say so.

I love this poem. What first struck me was the sentiment of “yourself again,” finding a sense of self in a poem that doesn’t belong to you was a pleasant surprise. I also like the personification of “form” in Bervin’s net. In this entire collection form is at the forefront. Bervin is experimenting with this new form, with its sense of wonder and searching for a new manner of expression. This feeling permeates these poems, so to see it articulated in this way was refreshing in the midst of the jumble of words. Form has an authority here.

The physical structure of the poem—be it by accident or not—also lends itself to the sentiment.  It creates a kind of house shape, with “yourself” hovering near the top, creating a peak, a roof over the rectangular body of the following lines. I also found “hold”’s direct location over “you” striking—they are the only two words that line up, and the space between then vibrates.  There is a security to their relationship within the space—“hold” acts as a barrier, protecting “you” from the chaos of the fallen.

The image of a house also stuck out to me—simple, desolate, sheltering in the absence of a poetic anchor. But it falls, which evokes the idea of the poem falling around this net, allowing it to exist.

Though this one was particularly evocative, I didn’t find all of Bervin’s nets as impressive. For example #137, which—without Shakespeare’s surrounding sonnet—only reads “anchored.” I had been reading these poems out of the context of the sonnets, as they stand on their own. Otherwise, I found Bervin’s work getting lost in Shakespeare’s.

Works Cited

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>

Net Number 63

‘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.