It’s been a while since I’ve posted these, so bear with me for a little background information again. Earlier last year, Melissa Broder at We Who Are About To Die invited me to submit a “self-review,” and, shortly thereafter, I received (due to a software glitch) a batch of misprinted copies of my chapbook Midnight’s Marsupium (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2010). I decided to use the opportunity to mess with some copies—erasing words, collaging images—as a way of commenting on my own text. I had such a good time doing it that I asked some other people if they wanted to use the remaining copies however they saw fit: and The Midnight’s Marsupium Defacement Project was born. Here are the past contributions:
Ryan Bradley, Sommer Browning, Anne Keefe, & Jared Schickling
I’m happy now to present the latest round: erasures and redactions by Stacy Muszynski and a video by Erika deVries of her son doing a fantastic rendition of “Haibun 5” (it’s kind of an unintentional erasure). Enjoy!
[Note: The haibun form, a mix of poetic prose and haiku, was pioneered by Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō in The Hut of the Phantom Dwelling (Genjūan No Ki, 1690) and in his famous travelogue Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku No Hosomichi, 1694). The half-dozen haibun in John Ashbery’s A Wave (1984) were the inspiration for the pieces in Midnight’s Marsupium.]***
ERIKA DEVRIES
Erika deVries is a mother, artist, lady in love, fairy tale teller/reader/believer, thread thief, and mundanity expert. You can view more of her work at: http://www.erikaswonderlands.net/.
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STACY MUSZYNSKI
Stacy Muszynski writes. Find her fiction at elimae and Opium, her book reviews at The Rumpus and The Collagist, her interviews scattered throughout the web. She’s the former web editor of American Short Fiction and a current PEN Prison Writing mentor and National Book Critic Circle member. She’s at work on a number of projects, all of them filled with words.
