The ms of m y kin

by Janet Holmes

Poetry. Explains Janet "If you write out 'The Poems of Emily Dickinson' and erase some of the letters very neatly and precisely, you can get to THE MS OF M Y KIN—the manuscript of my kin, as it were; the manuscript of my family. It might also be said to be the manuscript of my kind." "If Ronald Johnson had an epic ( Paradise Lost ) to erase in creating his masterwork, RADI OS, then Janet Holmes has chosen a more difficult task, namely that of erasing from the most compressed poetry there is. Emily Dickinson's poems come to us so nearly pre-erased that their further erasure by Holmes dramatically frees instances of prophecy, voices from 1861-62 rediscovered in contemporary political discourse. It seems that the best of the embeds in Iraq was Emily Dickinson; read her reports from the (af)front here"—Susan M. Schultz.

Genres: Poetry, War

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Janet Holmes is an award-winning poet and author of four books of poetry: F2F; Humanophone; The Green Tuxedo; and The Physicist at the Mall. Her awards include grants from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the Bush Foundation, the Loft-McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota Arts Board; the Minnesota Book Award, the Foreword Magazine Poetry Book of the Year award, the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize, the Pablo Neruda Award, and two inclusions in the Best American Poetry series; and fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, the Fondation Ledig-Rowholt (Switzerland), and Fundación Valparaíso (Spain). Since 1999 she has served as director and editor of Ahsahta Press, an all-poetry literary nonprofit press based at Boise State University, where she teaches in the MFA Program for Creative Writing.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting work. I'm fascinated by erasure poetry: A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Phillips was amazing. The ms of m y kin by Janet Holmes uses Emily Dickinson poems written during the Civil War to comment on the U.S./Iraqi war.

I loved what Holmes did with the Dickinson. I have tried writing erasure poems; they're trickier than it might appear to write but fun to do. Meaning revealed from within meaning. Fun to do and fun to read.

The biggest effect of reading this is that I want to go back and reread Dickinson.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seems weird to be rating my own books -- but I guess it would also be weird to rate them badly!

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. I liked the concept more than the execution, I think.

[Paige Sweet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea/concept of the book -- erasing the already-sparse poems of Emily Dickinson as a means to add to them appealing. I also like that Holmes's own political objectives -- to draw out the resonances between Dickinson's poems (which may themselves contain obliquely reference the Civil War) and the wars initiated by Bush-Cheney. That is, I like that it draws some attention to the latent politics in Dickinson herself. And several of the poems are quite thought-provoking and good. But, I also think that the "cheats" -- for example, combining multiple Dickinson poems to make one new poem -- rings false, especially when one can identity the Dickinson poem(s) that provides the "base." Many of the poems also hit too hard by isolating heavy words or ripping words out of Dickinson's context in order to make them resound in our historical moment (the many references to oil, desert, etc.). These instrumentalize Dickinson in a way that does not appeal to me, perhaps because one of the things I like about Dickinson is her tendency (to use one of her expressions) to tell it slant.

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

1861.19 (266-267)
You know who
"shares"
Dominions—
Now
pay
this
Contract
's worth
Rearrange a
Brain!
Amputate
a man!
spirit, in thy
unacknowledged (36)

1862.10 (312-316)
"Hope" is the
tune without the
Bird
the chillest
strangest
sunshine (61)

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite collections to date. I'm- stunned.

[anna jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

i'll like this more when i read more of dickinson. skill issue on my part.

[Genevieve]

My review is here: http://galatearesurrection15.blogspot...

[André Habet]

I've been reading several erasure collections over the past few months due to an erasure assignment I designed for my undegraduate academic writing students. What I'm starting to hone in as what I find rewarding about the form is how it can unearth thoughts lying in the unconscious of others' language. However, in the case of these poems I often forgot I wasn't reading Dickinson's actual poems as these feel so much like her (granted, I haven't read her work extensively). These seek to erasure Dickinson's civil war era poems to reveal their relevance to post 9/11 US, and maybe I'm just not seeing the connection or the ways these function as persona poems accord to the text note at the end. I really enjoyed the language quite a bit at times, but felt underwhelmed by it as a whole. It does make me want to read more Dickinson, and check out Holmes' other work because I do love the imagery she gets at sometimes. Just not for me is I guess what all this is moving towards. not for me.