Below are 5 poems from my manuscript Har___d_Sent_____, a collection of seventy-two erasure poems which make use of "The Harvard Sentences" as a source text. The Harvard Sentences are a set of 72 lists of phonetically balanced sentences developed in the 1960s for experimentation and optimization in sound, voice, and hearing technologies. While the sentences themselves, which were meant to merely pass as meaningful text, are unrelated, I find the lists are unexpectedly delightful and mysterious and capacious.
With this work, I was interested in excavating narrative and meaning in the sentence lists, imagining partial transmissions, and exploring the sonic energies of these sentences, all the while considering how language both influences and is shaped by the technologies we use for communication and hearing. The pieces themselves seek to draw attention to the transmissionness of the lists and evoke possible cadences, bitrates, and channels available within them.
~ Patrick Williams
List 5
the state in early days
was torn on
Sickness
in the hot sun
The lazy cool
Lift the stone over
seven books at once
and plunge in
The gang left the
wire inside
was torn on
Sickness
in the hot sun
The lazy cool
Lift the stone over
seven books at once
and plunge in
The gang left the
wire inside
List 6
frosty air
failed to
lead to sums
a flop from the very start
A saw is a tool
moved on
soldiers the next hill
of sugar makes
a rosebush the
lost live in a storm
failed to
lead to sums
a flop from the very start
A saw is a tool
moved on
soldiers the next hill
of sugar makes
a rosebush the
lost live in a storm
List 9
The attacked
See the glaring the scared
are more than two
wide and too droopy
The lawyer
curled around the fence
large
Men strive but
Always
lay prone
See the glaring the scared
are more than two
wide and too droopy
The lawyer
curled around the fence
large
Men strive but
Always
lay prone
List 14
A cramp is
the same phrase thirty times
the rose leaves
Two plus ten
glow deep in the eye of
your problems wise
friend cherish
and
frown when events take
a strong smoky taste
the same phrase thirty times
the rose leaves
Two plus ten
glow deep in the eye of
your problems wise
friend cherish
and
frown when events take
a strong smoky taste
List 16
empty flask
track mark
He broke a new shoelace
for the
urge stories
have all been
lost
We tried to replace the i but failed
She wed at
a red light
track mark
He broke a new shoelace
for the
urge stories
have all been
lost
We tried to replace the i but failed
She wed at
a red light
Patrick Williams is a poet and academic librarian living in Central New York. His recent work appears in publications including Vinyl Poetry, Nine Mile Magazine, Posit, and Bennington Review. His chapbook Hygiene in Reading (Publishing Genius, 2016) was awarded the 2015 Chris Toll Memorial Prize. He edits Really System, a journal of poetry and extensible poetics and is the hands behind typewriter.city. Find him at patrickwilliamsintext.com and on Twitter @activitystory.
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