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One chapter in this
book, the chapter

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that I was presenting
at Radcliffe

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or excerpting at Radcliffe that
day, is about erasure in poetry.

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And it's also
interested in the way

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that sometimes somebodys,
people, become nobodies

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through the erasure
of social disregard.

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And so it's a chapter
that moves between poems

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and also some historic
letters or historical letters

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that enslaved people
wrote to Abraham Lincoln.

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And I think those
letters and the hope

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that is attached to
them really demonstrates

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the hope of every poem to meet
a willing and receptive reader

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or listener.

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But maybe I'll read you a
little bit from this chapter

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and just from the
end, a poem of my own,

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which I gloss the
experience of writing.

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Erasure in poetry is a method
of deliberately redacting

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an existing text in order to
uncover alternate meanings.

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It is a means of making
visible that which

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lies buried within the
field of a familiar text.

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But that's only part
of the undertaking.

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By a further tilt
of the imagination,

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the practice of erasure
asks us to conceive

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of that which remains as yet
unimagined in the field of what

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passes for common reality.

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That which we have mistaken
in our haste or our arrogance

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for nothing and for nobody.

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In inviting readers to look
more closely at or listen

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more intently to what has been
overlooked, taken for granted,

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or accepted without
question, erasure

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is a way of countering
the everyday negations

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that render people, all of
them unique and essential

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on the human plane,
insignificant

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in the scheme of power.

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The redaction of an existing
text unburies unexpected

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testimony and delivers it
to those whose experience it

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affirms or corroborates,
while also making it legible,

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even undeniable, to those who
don't operate at the frequency

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of "nobodyness."

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And to whom it may
therefore be news.

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The challenge of writing a poem
in this way is to listen to

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or with the given
text while remaining

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free of a predetermined agenda
to allow the text itself

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to alert you to fresh
insights, useful counterpoints,

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and uncanny parallels.

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As a writer who has
worked in this very mode,

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I always tell myself that if I
approach the originating text

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looking merely to criticize
or dress down its author

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or originally-intended
audience, I

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will discover nothing
but my own ego, balanced

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as it were atop its high horse.

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And the poem will fail.

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But if I can go gently,
attentively, and trust

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that language and
time can work together

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to unburden any text from the
original intent for which it may

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have been written,
then I might trust

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that other forms
of clarity can be

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liberated to reveal themselves.

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And I go on to talk
a little bit about--

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thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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[LAUGHS]