Silent Storm: Poems of Obliteration

I found this online, a poem that was written by selective obliteration of text on a page.

Here's the main page that describes the process.

It's an intriguing notion, though not one new to poets: the idea of creating from what is already there, writing through erasure, the act of restricting language to meter and rhyme and somehow adding to languages power in the process of studied subtraction.

The American poet Ronald Johnson wrote a book length poem of obliteration using words taken from an 1892 edition of Pardise Lost that he found in a bookstall in Seattle, WA. Johnson's poem is called radi os.

Here's a sample from radi os that I doubt I will be able to get the spacing correct on, though the line breaks should be close:

and thy words so strange


double-formed, and

phantasm



Surprised
In darkness


Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement seized



in secret
growing
And fields

Through all the Empyrean.
headlong
Into this Deep;
I also:
key

Without my opening.

Johnson contrives this poem by the erasure of words from the following passage from Book 2 of Milton's poem, in a scene between Sin and Satan before a council in Hell:

"So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange
Thou interposest, that my sudden hand,
Prevented, spares to tell thee yet by deeds
What it intends, till first I know of thee
What thing thou art, thus double-formed, and why,
In this infernal vale first met, thou call'st
Me father, and that phantasm call'st my son.
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now
Sight more detestable than him and thee."
T' whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate replied:--
"Hast thou forgot me, then; and do I seem
Now in thine eye so foul?--once deemed so fair
In Heaven, when at th' assembly, and in sight
Of all the Seraphim with thee combined
In bold conspiracy against Heaven's King,
All on a sudden miserable pain
Surprised thee, dim thine eyes and dizzy swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth, till on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed,
Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement seized
All th' host of Heaven; back they recoiled afraid
At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign
Portentous held me; but, familiar grown,
I pleased, and with attractive graces won
The most averse--thee chiefly, who, full oft
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing,
Becam'st enamoured; and such joy thou took'st
With me in secret that my womb conceived
A growing burden. Meanwhile war arose,
And fields were fought in Heaven: wherein remained
(For what could else?) to our Almighty Foe
Clear victory; to our part loss and rout
Through all the Empyrean. Down they fell,
Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, down
Into this Deep; and in the general fall
I also: at which time this powerful key
Into my hands was given, with charge to keep
These gates for ever shut, which none can pass
Without my opening.

This is a classic epiphany scene. Satan doesn't recognize the "snaky sorceress" in front of him, so she reminds him of who she is and where she came from. She tells how during the Satan-led rebellion in Heaven -- Satan's greatest moment thus far, even in failure -- and before the legions of rebellious angels and gathered seraphim she sprung out of the left side of Satan's forehead, clad in armor, frightening momentarily the heavenly hosts, who are the ones who named her Sin.

This scene is a dark redaction of various biblical and mythological accounts. Allusion is made to the holy family, to the trinity, to the virgin birth, and, of course, to the classic myth of the birth of Aphrodite, who emerged fully clad in armor from the forehead of Zeus.

Or was Milton perhaps not simply "alluding"? To create this passage set in hell, Milton obliterates all that is good from the story of Athena's birth. He obliterates the sanctity of the various biblical generation stories; and finally he obliterates the very act of recognition itself on the part of Satan, who doesn't know his own offspring until she explains who she is, and who in another mythological incarnation represented the painful but divine birth of wisdom.

Johnson hints at the mechanism of allusion through the "double-formed words" and "phantasms," but he obliterates all reference to a lack of recognition, thus restoring a special kind of wisdom and sight that Milton obliterated and had obliterated in him.