Jason Arias
Erasure Bed
(c) 2025
"Writing is writing
Except when it isn’t"
Since starting this chapbook blog back in 2006 my primary purpose was simply to mention the title, author, and publisher information without criticism (unless the book was truly horrid) or praise (unless truly deserving).
What I did not do, for the most part, is write about the author’s process or the way the poems appear on the page - any of that type of specifics has not been discussed for the majority of the chapbooks I have written about.
However, this one insists upon it so I will “go there”.
Perhaps it is because I am just learning about this one; a poet whom my Press has recently published sent me a copy of a book of his (nostraDAMus 2032 by Jason Arias published in 2024 by Broadstone Books out of Frankfort, KY). Perhaps it was the way the poems appeared on the page - yes, it definitely had something to do with that. Also, it might have been the language he was using seems familiar in it’s almost layered quality. This was not mid-20th century poetry. This was post-post-modern. As if words plunked from a computer screen. This was my kind of poetry.
{ full disclosure : a book of mine was published in 2024 entitled written in the stubble of 2 torn out pages which mirrored Jason’s work without being aware of it. I intentionally write in a similar way as Jason seems to have}
So, I got his contact info and wrote him and he wrote back and a conversation formed. We discussed erasure/blackout/Tom Philips/William Burroughs cutup work and then he told me he had just finished an erasure project and that he would send me a copy - he did. He actually sent me copy #1.
As he explains in his introduction, his erasure book is based on the 1959 novel, Hard Hearts are for Cabbages by Vii Putman. Considering how he used a good deal of spatial separation in his earlier book, I was surprised that he chose to format this one in an almost traditional layout but I learned he only did that to shorten the book to a chapbook size. If one read the text without knowing it was an ‘erasure’, they could easily assume it was merely a book of prose poetry. But it is not “merely” anything.
Which leads me back to the quote at the top. “Writing is writing / except when it isn’t.” The traditional way of the public’s understand of how a writer writes, often coming directly from the writer himself who assumes that any actual detailed explanation would be met with a blank stare from the person who asked about their “process”, is that it “just flows out of me”. And writing does flow. Semiconsciously or completely unconsciously. Writers can “flow” as though in a trance.
However - this isn’t that. By “this” I mean the fragmented and fractured universe of writing that I am talking about. Going backwards through Tom Philips, Mary Ruefle, artist books, William Burroughs cut-ups, exquisite corpses, the intentional spacing of poetry by e e cummings and Apollaire, and all the like minded and similar writers and artists who saw the book itself to be a bound canvas of words; back to the first person that put marginalia into the first Guttenberg printed book: THAT far back! I would say that books as we know them have been altered by those who have read them and owned them up to this very day.
I have referred to what I do, for the most part, to be assemblage instead of writing. Yes, I do write as the muse flows through me (this entire piece has been written in this way) but I am now talking about re-invention, re-configuation, re-purposing text to create something new.
Patteran by Jason Arias is in this universe of this uncatagorized “work” that is being done on the fringes of literature and technology and sensory overload. I have heard critics who say that we are stealing the work of previous author's books. Well, I also do collage and have heard the same observations or complaints about collages that use ad text or images from magazines and my response to all of it is I am taking the word or image out of its original context and repurposing them to create something new. It’s been done long before me and hopefully I am just part of the history of lierature, art, human understanding. Especially in these extraordinary and chaotic times we find ourselves living through.
Patteran is 63 pages of erasure text as prose poetry. My copy, the only copy made so far, is hand sewn. It was self-published by the author using his own “Erasure Bed” imprint. Now quickly get in line for the copies to follow. May he have a huge demand.
