SC25 - Day Twenty-One (The Poetry Box)

All poetry is fragment: it is shaped by its breakages, at every turn. (Heather McHugh)

I can't believe we're three weeks in! And I haven't quit yet! I think I should have front-loaded more of the larger books, though. We’ll see how the next ten days go….

August 21st - Book Twenty-One (The Poetry Box)

Number of Pages: 37
Start Page: 1
Number of Poems: 31 or 32*
Time Reading: 7 minutes (not a typo)

The book is Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter), by Mary Warren Foulk — First Place Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2021. As the title says, this is a book of erasures of Mary Warren Foulk’s letter to her mother, coming out as gay. The erasures are spare and powerful; this is an art. Also immediately inspirational, and I want to start piling up texts to erase this instant. But today is not the day for that — at least, for me. Feeling inspired? Have at it!

*Number of poems is “31 or 32” depending on whether you count the full-text copy of the letter that is the subject of the erasures.

This Sealey trek gets tougher starting tomorrow; I must gird my loins.

TIL, courtesy of Merriam-Webster, that there are meanings of “gird” I had no idea existed! Sense 1 of definition 1 is a fairly common (for some value of “common”) usage, “to prepare (oneself) for action”; in “gird my loins” it must be sense 2 of definition 1, to wit, “encircle or bind with a flexible band,” which, OK, but I am now also envisioning potential trips to Smitten Kitten (“PROVIDE, EQUIP,” etc.) or, for people in kink culture, maybe definition 2, “to sneer at: MOCK.” Feel free to drop a gird (definition 3) in the comments if you like.

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