david dodd lee

In a note that accompanies And Others, Vaguer Presences, the most recent collection of erasures by David Dodd Lee, he uses the phrase, “the poem wanting what the poem wants.” This statement curiously corroborates my impression that these poems were actually written by the poems themselves, which had definite ideas about what they wanted and didn’t want. It’s a strange feeling, being twice removed from one’s poems, strange and refreshing. I highly recommend Lee’s version of the poems’ poems. —John Ashbery