In Claire Wahmanholm’s poetry chapbook “Night Vision” (New Michigan Press, 2017), the world is transformed and brought to its most primal state after some catastrophic events that readers may never be quite sure of. The chapbook includes 30 poems—21 prose poems and nine erasure poems. (Erasure poetry is a form where an entire page of found text will be erased until only a few words remain. These leftover words form a poem.)
All nine erasure poems in “Night Vision” come from the wildly popular “Cosmos” by Carl Sagan, setting a reader expectation of wonder at the universe.
Loss an destruction are detailed instead, through Wahmanholm’s gripping yet elusive prose.