Janet Holmes

The Ms of M Y Kin Janet Holmes

Poetry. Explains Janet Holmes: "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.