SC25 - Day Thirty (Ugly Duckling Presse)
Increasingly in [Shakespeare's] work, what he leaves out becomes much more important than what he puts in.... (Harold Bloom)
No, it’s not a book of Shakespeare poems. Or, it is, but not exactly. Or, well, you’ll see….
Second-to-last day of the 2025 Sealey Challenge, and swear to God after tomorrow I will not be reading any more poetry books for—the rest of the week, maybe? 😅
August 30th - Book Thirty (Ugly Duckling Presse)
Number of Pages: (no page numbers)
Start Page: 1
Number of Poems: (no table of contents)
Time Reading: (did not time)
The book is Nets, by Jen Bervin, poet and visual artist. The link goes to Amazon, but this is a hard book to find. I got lucky 😉. (There’s a copy on eBay for $52.) It’s (many & beautiful) erasures of Shakespeare sonnets.
She’s done some amazing collaborations — cf. Su Hui’s Picture of the Turning Sphere — inspiring even more ideas for my own work. Not exactly something I am lacking, but FFS I’m never getting to all of it anyway; maybe some of these new ideas will displace less-worthy options 🤩.
One more book!
I’m also planning a 2025 Sealey Challenge wrap-up post, with my takeaways from this experience. Will there be a cool video complete with soundtrack? Will there be a poem? Will there be a 2026 challenge for Davi? Who knows?!? Watch for it….