Jen Bervin

A fascinating book. Shakespeare's Sonnets are printed in halftone, and Bervin has chosen certain words and phrases to print in full, ordinary black type. So you can read the sonnet as a ghostly form "behind" the poem Bervin has created. I don't think he has made full use of the meanings of the Sonnets, but then again it's only right that his own interests, slightly constrained by Shakespeare's choice of words, Here are two examples (you have to imagine the halftone words that separate these words Bervin has selected):

heed this privilege
The hardest knife

and another:

I am
vanishing or vanished
in these black lines

The book rewards re-reading. It is also beautifully designed by the wonderful Ugly Duckling Presse.… (more)