an erasure of writings of Episcopal priest, writer, and theologian William Porcher DuBose.
Jason Myers
incomplete without God
sufferings abound
is it lawful to produce joy?
Our Lord does not say
I have dwelt so long
in the tribulation of life
I open briefly
fulfillment
is Christ the deep that answers
We have seen
the first Maryland invasion
the Confederacy beginning
to break
a New World
without me
“For this project I considered what poets refer to as ‘documentary poetics,’ letting archival, historical texts make the body of the poem. In the end I found this produced poems that were interesting factually but inert emotionally and aesthetically…. In the erasure poems I have taken primary texts by (white male) leaders, lay and ordained, in the Episcopal Church and ‘erased’ the majority of their texts to reveal something evocative.”
—Jason Myers