“The earth / the earth / the earth / said”In Erase Genesis, critically-acclaimed Kentucky poet and translator Rebecca Gayle Howell transforms the KJV creation story for the climate change age. Devoted to the same three chapters, Howell’s erasures raise a new myth—a story of the Earth’s intimacy with us. Here, man is not given dominion. Instead, the trees and the waters keep eternity, and the Lord Woman seeds tenderness as the only way forward. A book-length poem with its roots in art, ecopoetry, progressive spirituality, and literary translation—Erase Genesis dismantles centuries of hurt as we bare our beginning anew, in abundance with Earth’s divine call: “Be light and / let be”
