Category: Pepys Diary erasure project

Starting January 1, 2013, this is a daily exercise in erasure poetry based on the 17th-century Diary of Samuel Pepys. Why this work? Its language is admirably concrete, with recurring words and turns of phrase shaped by the exigencies of Pepys’ original shorthand. In thought and content it stands at the beginning of the modern era: the first truly confessional piece of literature by a man equally fascinated by religion and science, and whose curiosity encompassed everything from music-making and theater to mathematics, accounting, politics, fashion, and carnal pleasures. And last but not least, the 1899 Wheatley edition is available online in a website that is really a model for how to present literature on the web. It was my desire to read it day by day that led to this project, which I view not as erasure but as discovery—a kind of deep (mis)reading. Pepys was a sexual predator and an architect of British colonialism who personally profited off the slave trade, so any less than an engaged, critical reading of the diary, in this day and age, would be irresponsible. From a secret diary, these are the secret poems hidden even from the author himself.

I began compiling the erasures into free ebooks in 2017. Here are 1664, 1665, 1666, 1667, 1668 and 1669, and from my second attempt, here are 1660, 1661, and 1662.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Revolution Revelation

erasure of a page from Samuel Pepys' diary

[In the news,
the countenance of men
changed with joy.
I saw a beast singing
upon the tyrannical lamb.
The fanatic people lack
for nothing: bonfires,
all the bells in all
the churches ringing,
rumps tied upon sticks
and carried up and down.
The butchers rang
a peal with their knives
when they were going
to sacrifice their rump.
It was past imagination—
a street of fire.]


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 11 February 1659/60. (If you read no other entries from the diary, be sure to click through and read this one!)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Stranger

erasure of a page from Samuel Pepys' diary

[“Tell me, stranger,
what love should be called.”
The stranger preached the whole book
then went into court.
A drum came by, beating
a strange manner of beat—
now and then a single stroke.
I wondered at what I saw
but did not speak.]


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 5 February 1659/60.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Hanging jack

erasure of a page from Samuel Pepys' diary

[My lute an office
where I expect to walk.

I found a stone in mourning
for the temple.

Bread and butter were discoursing
of the great eater.

I remember a hanging jack
to roast birds—that heat.

I played a while on my lute
and could not kill anything.]


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 4 February 1659/60.