Arsenal Reading
Arsenal/Sin Documentos by Francesco Levato: A Reading List of Complimentary Erasure Texts
Nets by Jen Bervin
THE MS OF MY KIN by Janet Holmes Radi Os by Ronald Johnson
The Ashbery Erasure Poems by David Dodd Lee Darkness by Yedda Morrison
ZONG! by M. NourbeSe Philip A Humument by Tom Phillips
A Little White Shadow by Mary Ruefle
Additional Readings & Curricular Resources
“A Brief History of Erasure Poetry” at Jacket2 http://jacketmagazine.com/38/macdonald-erasure.shtml
Solmaz Sharif on Erasure in The Volta: http://www.thevolta.org/ewc28-ssharif-p1.html
Jennifer S. Cheng on Erasure in Jacket2 https://jacket2.org/commentary/erasure-poetry-revealing-i
Rachel Stone on Trump-Era Erasure Poetry in The New Republic https://newrepublic.com/article/145396/trump-era-boom-erasure-poetry
Wave Books Library of Source Texts https://erasures.wavepoetry.com
Creative Writing Prompts
Erasure as a Vehicle for Critique
Choose a source text. This can be a text that you love, hate, or otherwise had a strong reaction to. Then create an erasure that functions as a critique of the source text. Political documents and news stories would likely be rich sources of inspiration for this assignment.
Procedural Erasure
Choose a source text that you find interesting. Then decide on one element that you wish to erase from it. For example, Yedda Morrison erased people from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, creating an ecopoetics. Similarly, Ronald Johnson erased religion from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, creating a new vision of spirituality. As you create your own procedural erasure, you should consider erasure as a vehicle for social criticism. What change do you want to advocate for through your use of innovative language?
Erasure as Excavation
In Arsenal/Sin Documentos, Francesco Levato uses erasure to redirect the focus of readerly attention, excavating images, language, and music that were buried in the original text. With that in mind, you’ll need to choose a source text to work with. Then, as you create your erasure, choose one element (whether it’s an image, a word, a narrative, or a specific type of language) to bring to the fore. How can you redirect the focus of your reader’s eye through the act of erasure?
Erasure & the Page as a Visual Field
Francesco Levato’s Arsenal/Sin Documentos utilizes several different types of erasure. Blackout, strikethrough, greyscale, and white space all indicate missing or excised text at different moments in the narrative.
For this assignment, you will choose one source text and erase it three different ways: —You will erase parts of the text using a “blackout” technique, where the excised text is blotted out with black.
—You will then create an erasure of the same text using white space to indicate missing or erased text.
—Then you will present the erased text in greyscale, and the text you’re “keeping” in black.
After you’ve created your three erasures, think about how visual presentation of the work changes or shapes its meaning. How do these different erasure techniques create different readerly experiences?
Discussion Questions for Francesco Levato’s Arsenal/Sin Documentos
How would you describe Levato’s critique of the current political moment? Relatedly, what change is he advocating for through his use of experimental language?
Why has Levato chosen erasure as the vehicle for his incisive political and social commentary? What does this innovative technique make possible for the reader’s experience of the work?
With an erasure text, there are many ways to present the material on the page. For example, Levato makes frequent use of blackout. Other writers indicate missing text using white space, strikethrough, or greyscale. How does the visual presentation of Levato’s text shape your experience as readers? Why has he chosen blackout as the vehicle for his erasure?
Is erasure inherently an act of violence? When can this violence be productive or generative?
What are the structures of power at play in an erasure text? When do practitioners of erasure need to be mindful of imbalances of power and agency?
How has Levato used the act of erasure to challenge existing power structures? Can erasure, appropriation, and other experimental gestures empower those voices that have been disenfranchised within the current political moment?
Writing Assignment
Francesco Levato’s Arsenal/Sin Documentos makes innovative use of templates that are not germane to poetry: definitions, official government documents, policies, laws, and glossaries are reimagined as poetry.
For this assignment, you will choose a form of writing that’s normally useful, practical, and serviceable. Here’s a list of possibilities:
—Glossary
—Dictionary Definition
—Encyclopedia Entry
—Government Document or Memo
—Legal Document
—Guidebook
—Letter of Appeal
—Petition
—Course Case
Once you’ve chosen a form to work with, fill it with wildly unexpected and unpractical content.
Here are some things to think about as you write: What expectations does the reader bring to the literary form you’ve chosen? How can those expectations be used as material to surprise your reader?