Jen Bervin – författare

Although a very prolific poet—and arguably America’s greatest—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) published fewer than a dozen of her eighteen hundred poems. Instead, she created at home small handmade books. When, in her later years, she stopped producing these, she was still writing a great deal, and at her death she left behind many poems, drafts, and letters. It is among the makeshift and fragile manuscripts of Dickinson’s later writings that we find the envelope poems gathered here. These manuscripts on envelopes (recycled by the poet with marked New England thrift) were written with the full powers of her late, most radical period. Intensely alive, these envelope poems are charged with a special poignancy—addressed to no one and everyone at once.Full-color facsimiles are accompanied by Marta L. Werner and Jen Bervin’s pioneering transcriptions of Dickinson’s handwriting. Their transcriptions allow us to read the texts, while the facsimiles let us see exactly what Dickinson wrote (the variant words, crossings-out, dashes, directional fields, spaces, columns, and overlapping planes).

The Gorgeous Nothings — the first full-color facsimile edition of Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts ever to appear — is a deluxe edition of her late writings, presenting this crucially important, experimental late work exactly as she wrote it on scraps of envelopes. A never-before-possible glimpse into the process of one of our most important poets.The book presents all the envelope writings — 52 — reproduced life-size in full color both front and back, with an accompanying transcription to aid in the reading, allowing us to enjoy this little-known but important body of Dickinson’s writing. Envisioned by the artist Jen Bervin and made possible by the extensive research of the Dickinson scholar Marta L. Werner, this book offers a new understanding and appreciation of the genius of Emily Dickinson.

Den amerikanska poeten och konstnären Jen Bervin lägger ett nät över William Shakespeares Sonetter för att låta nya dikter kliva ut ur den befintliga texten vilken ligger kvar i bakgrunden. När en poet skriver en sonett står hen framför en palimpsest, framför samma pergament på vilket det har skrivits och suddats ut tusen och åter tusen sonetter; i samma ögonblick som hen skriver sonetten hamnar hen oundvikligen i palimpsestens makt. Jen Bervin konkretiserar i Nät arvet som vilar på varje poets axlar när hennes dikter träder fram ur hans ord. Med Eva Ströms svenska översättningar av Shakespeares Sonetter i bakgrunden tolkar Niclas Nilsson Bervin genom att lyfta fram ord till nya dikter.