Strike Out: an Ars Poetica Erasure

As erasure poetry can lend itself to ars poetica moments, as Jeannie Vanasco acknowledges in her Believer article "Absent Things as if They are Present," I, too, seek out an ars poetica through re-redacting The Pentagon Papers. As I am a descendant of a Vietnam Veteran, I know this identity has informed and affects me as a poet, so this project serves as a representation of it. As what Vietnam-era poet Robert Duncan called poetry as “the opening of the field," I am transforming this document's battlefields into poetry.