Replacement Poetry

I realized that a lot of the poetry I will read on Thursday at the "big tent" follows the procedure of replacing text with other text, whether through translation, erasure, or using titles taken from other sources and reinterpreting them completely, as I do in my masterpiece, The Thelonious Monk Fake Book.

I have a harder time writing without some pretext, some spur, some organizing principle. The poem "Mayhew's Mood" is an exception, aside from the title that refers to "Monk's Mood" and "Parker's Mood." The organizing principle there is simply that of a diary of emotional states.