There are those who feel a sacred text should never be tinkered with. Poet and translator Rebecca Gayle Howell's stunning Erase Genesis is for those who disagree, who remain open to the possibility that Scripture can speak its truth even when transformed.
Howell's thoroughly moving book-length poem is an iterative encounter with the King James Version of the first three chapters of Genesis. These words, already rich in poetry and familiar to many, are faithfully recorded in the opening pages, providing the ground from which Howell's brilliant work of re-creation springs. Using inky-blue watercolor lines to obscure parts of the text, Howell calls forth an artful new song. After first retelling the original story of human "dominion/ over/ all," she rewinds the text, returning to obscure everything but "or/ or/ or/ the/ earth/ the earth/ the sea/ the air over/ you." In this way, she inverts the hierarchy, suggesting that humanity was made to live in harmony with the earth.
Although erasure is sometimes seen as a rejection of the source, Howell's disruption here serves to deepen rather than dismiss a sense of holiness, inspiring gratitude for what has been given: "Thus the heavens and the earth/ the earth and/ the earth/ breathed into his nostrils/ a garden." The poem doesn't shrink from the harsher truths of humanity's choices--"And the man/ parted/ to keep/ evil/ good/ and his ribs closed up"--but insists on the hope that might yet be found in seed and root and gathering together. Armed with a quiet urgency, Erase Genesis transfixes as it transforms the text and its readers. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian