Nets by Jen Bervin

For this week, I chose to focus on Nets by Jen Bervin. This work is a collection of what is essentially erasure poetry in which Bervin has taken selected sonnets by Shakespeare and presented them with most of the text faded and selected words emboldened to create new meanings. The majority of the original (Shakespearean) text is left intact -- not actually erased, but very much altered. The sonnets are presented one to a page with a blank facing page -- each very isolated from the rest. They are titled with numbers that correspond to the numbering of Shakespeare's sonnets, and it is quite noticeable that all of his sonnets are not represented in Bervin's work. This connected for me with McGann's statement that Yeats "used the format and organization . . . to make his argument" (114). Bervin's work on the macro level is doing some of the same things that each sonnet is doing on a micro level. I also think that there is some radiality because Bervin does not gloss any terms or provide other notes or apparatus. This is  it to say that Bervin's book is not announcing its connection loudly, but I'm not sure that Bervin is explicitly interpreting that connection. The spine, for example, gives the title Nets, but the title page reads "THE SONNETS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE". The text is also printed in a serif font, giving it a feeling of legitimacy and connectedness to the source text. I don't think that what Bervin is doing is quite as complicated as what Drucker is doing in the works cited in her article, but the visual representation is still very important here.

At the moment, I'm not able to locate my copy of this book, so I'm posting links to info about it here:

http://jenbervin.com/projects/nets#1

http://jenbervin.com/projects/nets