Erasing V_rg_n_a, image by Daniel Y. Harris
excerpts
from The Voyage Out Sonnets*
Voyage Out Sonnet 1
As a
narrow arm leaps to fidget
in
beauty, it is better not to be
a long
blue left hand. October becoming
a tall
man with cloak eyes and traffic gaze twitched
between
motor cars. The safe mouth rolled
down,
leaning. A feeling greater than pavement juts
out in
angles of preachers dangling
wads of
paper flourished with a grotesque chorus.
Patch
straw fell into ears. Shoulders polished
picture
postcard eyes. Bridges
of
animals shoot blankly. A cab
broken
by walking motor-moons jingling
a
soothing reply that clothed
the
skeleton beneath.
Voyage Out Sonnet 2
Dismal
lovers cloak sordid
their
flower company, their sodden
blue
heads pressed together. Sea-gulls
sharply
trotting like plate-glass,
carefully-finished.
Black cloak
wounds
in danger
of
egg-shells steaming
with
obliterated fog.
They
trusted water, square and
oblong
like a child. Yellow light
escorted
the man and remarked
among
delicate feet, indicating
mournful
waterchildren approaching
dimly
in the dark flag of night.
Voyage Out Sonnet 3
The
purple romantic was warmer than shaking
hands.
His eyes sat down as some trees shook
the
collar of his coat and spoke on the weather.
General
Soup held out a thumping lip and began arranging
a pause
across the table. The tobacconist left a theory
about
the planets loose through the light outside that slid
across
a melancholy moan. An unmarried house sagely carved
apples
with considerable acidity. Arches sympathize
with
wastefill and acid produced
in
industry. A collection of free fog sirens struck
hands,
upon which they rose and left. Forgotten
stories
loosen round heads. They anchor
a swarm
of eternally burnt figures
visible
against skirts wrapping slowly.
Voyage Out Sonnet 4
Smoked
pepper cut the ghost of drowned yellow
oblivion
smiling at nothing. Rooted, bleached, faded,
the
mirror was twisted. An authority on traffic
and
love had chosen fish, prickles, and being killed in the night.
Arms
insist on a definite outline. Years reflect that intimacy
was
threatened. A stick was permanent. The door burly shook
with
the glow of obedience. Grown young,
still
and close, squeezing the side on the sofa, brightened
brats
ventured alone across the fire to show
the
tricks of nonsense. Reflecting fish
speak
of comfort passing and fumbling at the door. A melancholy
moment
looked in laughing severely, a bored attempt to improve
the
droop of the situation, now a leaping mouse sucking
a
cigar. This elevated the ocean. Great white monsters laughed to no music.
Voyage Out Sonnet 5
Uncomfortable
rocking wore a kind of beauty. Hooting
river
eggs cast reflections of the dead. Children
dropping
from a height into a pool on summer’s flushed face.
Examinations
carried nonsense among shoulder blades.
Cycling
every morning spoons against the insides mounted
in a
heap. Heavy rainfall proved true
with
ferocious energy, concentrating this moment
into a
kind of walrus swinging
with a
slight rocking movement of his body.
The
eccentric disappeared in a pale horizon, effervescing,
leaving
October salt and a sloping
cheek.
The ribs of words blow upon
the
shoulder, laughing. An intercepted rock-like message
you
could put your fingers through.
Voyage Out Sonnet 6
Sheets
sewed to the bone went to the laundry, wavered
upon a
table. Threads made ladders
to the
ordinary eye to sit
and
hear heart complaints dreaming no more.
Miniature
crusted photographs hold babies
in a
frame. A hammered voice opened the door too high,
flung
open the forehead of the room. Swearing summer
lay
beneath the sun in cornfields. Cluttered land
murmurs,
the man vanished. Aimless
ants
withdrew out of sight into the bark of a tree.
Pomegranates
whirled between the sentences
whistled
far off in other parts of the room. Branches
forced
through the window. The music
died as
a child lying behind the knob on the arm.
Voyage Out Sonnet 7
Thoughts
startled the obscure laughter. Nonsense
blotted
out morning. Umbrellas
could
only say that lips cease to move, blazing
and
subsiding in the rising and falling of the droop of sleep.
Early
sounds beat above the mouth cleaving
at
waves washing against the vessel shouting thirsty
in
rubbing hands, combing the glass
of
champagne. Passages produced
personal
objections. They were pleased to submit.
Ministers
foretold of people buried.
They
stranded dusk with the autumnal
whistler.
One whipped the hour ringing the glass
fingers
made uneasy by farms. The eccentric held
a voice
to the table and took soup imperceptibly and with pause.
Voyage Out Sonnet 35
Laughter
grating dead silence, uncrumpling
from
the wall. Love was movement crowded
into
words of rhythmically stripping
nonsense.
Into the darkness, breath so dark it numbed.
Dreams
repeated chairs scattered
in a
square box vaguely twitching as if paper. Metallic
sleep
lit a cigarette impatiently. Lonely
minds
look at the ruins in the garden facing
sharply
cut spirits. Numbness disappeared, flung off.
Silence
cut down a tree, big and splendid.
People
are puzzled, pointing to smoking cigarettes.
Trees
flirt with eyes: nobler than conversation.
A pale
look shut up in heaps of sleep.
Fragmentary,
hazardous instinct.
Voyage Out Sonnet 36
People
vividly grasp years, unconscious
of
loneliness. Dreams in the open room
occasionally
exclaim in the glass doorways.
Doubt
ran casually after a flying man, roared the page with a wave.
Years
flush eccentric meat with canary-coloured disapproval.
Old
pictures will become beautiful tomorrow.
Dark
electric water smiles pick
roses
without any teeth. Fast pits
sit and
smoke in the road, break
stones
in shaken hands. Massacres light moths in shut night.
Sharp
faces lay undertone, faded
like a
figure of speech. Eyebrows intervene
as
mission-smooth wishes. Orange cigarettes depart legs out, a series
of
beautiful hints flushing rose.
Voyage Out Sonnet 37
A naked
shade of stone smiles. A chronic end.
Breath
floats too hot to climb satisfied people.
Lips
made thinking ugly. Bodies
appeared
squirming on the flat future.
Flimsy
conversation pounces, inclined to bitter answer. Beastly
envy is
awfully soothing. Blush limited interest in morality.
To
escape, to hold in embroidery, a great decision: unformed,
experimental
feeling. Vague colours wanting
a walk
silently watch a needle.
An
abyss sounded as if a dark pyramid
possessed
by sewing. Smoky men gave thought without reason. Rumpled
eyes
bush the patches of white flowers, full of thought.
Blue
flamingo edges sunk between bells
rising,
swept round the seas, across mountains, dropping.
Voyage Out Sonnet 38
Long
ago, dolphins extended in the dipping of sun-dried sea. Chequered
blood
turned the clouds against the roots of water.
Red
remained broken with body, obeying peace.
Water
ceased a pebble concentrated upon blue hollows.
Lips
parted watching for swim-red hands. Arms
write
grey off faces, repeat. Shifted
brains
scratch shakes of air with ragged ease.
Horses
visualize absurd pianos afraid of heaven.
Rabbits
meditate upon life. The piano leaks
letters
up to the play. Oblong photographs roused the neck of a lamb.
Purple
dogs go out the eighteenth of April, walk along
the
factory chimneys in a mist. Pale yellow Spring barks
through
the streets. People hugged to death by light
become
lost under streets where people consider silent worship.
Voyage Out Sonnet 39
Smoke-brains
describe the world less splendid but more natural than atoms.
Beauty
building unconscious habits called vivid eyes to laughter.
Streets
describe flamingo red nonsense.
Sea
eyes look to breathe. Lips mercy-mood
the breath
which gazed out to sea.
Impersonal
pain vanished. An elbow arranging stones
like
the cry of an owl. Delight widened blue, replaced the olive trees.
Light
figures piano into music in the thin white gate.
Inhuman
pleasure split life. A pause
thoughtlessly
vowing to silence. A curious
atmosphere.
The theory of chaos crushed forth wildest
bursts
of mud. Depression ran
into
quick waterfalls, water-racing shaped,
perpetually
pressed downwards by the wind.
—Erik-John
Fuhrer
*These
poems are from a longer work titled The Voyage Out Sonnets, a
page by page erasure of Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out. During the process of erasure, I moved
chapter by chapter and then formed what I had into 50 experimental sonnets.
Solmaz Sharif has convincingly linked poetic erasure to government censorship,
which every erasure project certainly risks replicating. Woolf herself had to
censor herself in her novel in order to get published. Since the intent of this
project is to celebrate rather than censor, I was careful and mindful not to
redact but to highlight Woolf’s words. Rather than physically blackening out words
during my process, I left Woolf’s original text clean and instead circled words
that I believed revealed the multiple possibilities in the original text. I
highlighted language over narrative and provided agency and voice to animals
and inanimate objects, which Virginia Woolf often does herself in her later
work, such as “Kew Gardens.” For the most part, I did not add anything to the
text, with the exception of the rare addition of an "s" at the end of
a word. I also occasionally cobbled together a word from individual letters.
That said, Woolf's individual language remains mostly intact and unadulterated
in these poems, which intend to pay homage to Woolf's original text.
