This past November, thanks to the editors at Aquifer, The Florida Review online, published five of my erasure poems. Please see them below, or at Aquifer, The Florida Review.
Source text: Vincent van Gogh’s letters.
You may remember this poem from a year ago, when I published it on this blog as a response to the insanity that is Trump.
Germination is an unintended erasure poem (though I was delighted, if not a bit unnerved, by how its meaning eventually revealed itself). As I mentioned last year: “I believe it is an artist’s duty to speak out against cultural erasure, to bring light and truth forward through one’s art. Looking at the body of my erasure work, I think, in large part, that what I have been pursuing (consciously or not) is the gravity of survival, renewal and remembrance—poems that reveal the stories, suffering and mourning of all. Poems composed of glittering fragments of hope and love and compassion.”
Thank you, so very much, to the editors at Entropy Magazine, for publishing my poem on a much larger platform—giving it a second life, a place to sparkle.
No, I don’t mean that pause. Though I could write about it: how it hasn’t changed my life, hasn’t slowed me down, hasn’t made me crazy. (My children did that.) But I won’t. I could also tell you about the long pauses in my writing life. But I won’t do that either.
Instead, I’ll introduce you to a fun and daring literary journal based in Minneapolis that shares its name with this post’s title. (Titles can’t be copyrighted, you know. ;)) And I’m happy to announce that three of my erasure poems have been published in After the Pause‘s 2017 spring issue, alongside excellent prose, poetry and art. You can find my poems on pages k – m. Though do take time to peruse the whole issue (you may find a cosmic werewolf somewhere), it’s terrific.
Much thanks to ATP’s kind editors. 🙂
banks of noon 