Compose the Holes at Lemon Hound pointed to some erasure texts.
I recently ran across this one by daniel scott tysdal from Acts of Barbarity and Vandalism (Martian Press, 2006) which is downloadable. He is overlaying text in text yet not erasing but refuting with the text with the substance of itself. You can still see the original so can read both simultaneously. It seems more like a dialogue. It hides nothing and so seems oddly evenhanded even tho the dominant argument is more bold and apparent.
IV. You
Is this government by propaganda? Call it, if
you prefer, government by education. But
education, in the academic sense of the
word, is not sufficient. It must be
enlightened by expert propaganda through
the creation of circumstances, through the
high-spotting of significant events, and the
dramatization of important issues. The
statesman of the future will thus be enabled
to focus the public mind on crucial points of
policy and regiment a vast, heterogeneous
mass of voters to clear understanding and
intelligent action.
Edward Bernays, Propaganda
The selective choices cause your mind to read the words the selected words are embedded in, popping those out to half strength instead of the fuzzy peripheral vision of the rest. So when “in” is called up so is “mind” but “crucial points” being further away is not attended to unless you deliberately look. It works with how the eye works with what the foveal vision catches.
No/on had an issue with a haibun, two translations of the same, and each overlaid with a bolded text pulled up in the same way to place a new haiku within the same text. I can’t seem to google the reference on pesbo nor did rifling the shelves turn it up. You’ll have to trust me on that one. It exists even if google can’t verify.
It is messing with the original intent but that messing with what data we have coming in is the one real job we have as we breathe and sleep and wake and eat. To have it there is leaving more up to the reader to have the rich direct experience of both.
Being one for loving as much data, and conflicting data, as possible, this works well with my brain. Secondary and tertiary sources of response poems are fine as a reaction piece or therapy, but if you want to understand something, using as primary as possible materials as the visible starting point in as close as possible to being side by side with the response makes the most sense. If one isn’t quoting then it just adds more work for the reader, a cognitive load of having to pile on the grains of salt because it is only hearsay.
If I get both sides, I can decide for myself, and only have the cognitive load of salt grains of trusting or not that the originals haven’t been distorted too much nor selectively sampled too much to sway towards the opposite side of the argument. What either sides say is another matter.
Which isn’t to say erasing out and leaving new found material behind is lesser but a different thing for different aims. One aims to sample, play, explore, press language, and the other more towards a stylized debate.