i've been thinking a lot lately about the challenge of "finding" the poem in a text or even a word. this quote by painter kazimir malevich in a recent issue of philosopy now magazine got me going on it:

“The human form is not intrinsic in a block of marble. Michelangelo in sculpting David did violence to the marble, he mutilated a piece of beautiful stone….. One must extract from marble those forms which could arise out from its own body, and a carved cube or other form is more valuable than any David. The same in painting, the word, music. “

i've been working for a while now on a poem about brancusi's 'the kiss,' a sculpture i think does an excellent job of "extract[ing]from marble those forms which could arise out from its own body." but the interesting challenge to me is how to do this with words. one tool i've found that seems very fun to play with in this pursuit is erasures, which allows you to create a poem by 'erasing' words from an existing page of text. very cool. my first attempt is here. any further attempts i'll post under user name d_ss. ¶ 10:15 AM