Jen Bervin Review

Jen Bervin’s book Nets is a wonderfully inventive artistic expression of poetry. The title comes from the word sonnets, from “The SonNETS of William Shakespeare”. However, the title also signifies the fact that the author uses a “netting” technique to form her poems. Bervin successfully “nets” or captures specifically chosen words and phrases from preexisting verses and makes them into her own works of art. She makes her poems from language found in a selected 60 of William Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. As the author herself explains, “I stripped Shakespeare’s sonnets bare to the “nets” to make the space of the poems open, porous, possible---a divergent elsewhere.” Bervin’s Nets has without a doubt achieved to highlight the ways in which poetry can be “open” and “porous” through beautiful simplicity. The ways Bervin uses her very few selected bold words to write a verse within a verse is brilliant. The technique Bervin uses of “netting” the poems not only unveils the personal narratives and smaller poems that can be found within the greater poem it also reveals the how the selected words are “nets”, entrapping the readers attention. Great examples of these personal narratives and bold signifying words can be found in Bervin’s version of sonnets, 55 and 63. In these poems, Bervin has successfully achieved the ability of showing herself on the page through another poet’s words. Bervin’s narrative within the sonnets is what ties the book together, to form one fascinating piece of art.

Bervin’s poetic style falls under the labels of both the Cubist and Surrealist artistic expression styles. Through analyzing poems and finding stories or separate poems within the work it exemplifies the world of poetic ambiguity, and versatility. The book is a great example portraying a poet’s personal artistic expression, and the inspiration many can find from fellow poets’ works. It is obvious that Bervin is a true fan of William Shakespeare and that her book is somewhat of a response to and celebration of the 16th century poet. In sonnet 135, Bervin even takes the opportunity to highlight only the word “Will” in the poem, making it seem as though she was paying homage to the late writer.

I wholeheartedly agree with W. Scott Howard’s review where he states, “Nets shapes not only juxtapositions of simultaneous fields of linguistic experience, but also rhapsodic (often nostalgic) lyricism in the new tracing lines that Bervin superimposes upon Shakespeare’s originals. Considered from this twin perspective, Bervin’s texts, therefore, are prose poems.” The language the author uses is again prose---simple, and used in everyday conversation. Bervin’s way of taking late 16th century/early 17th century poetic language and turning into a contemporary, easy, and everyday language is an accomplishment to be marveled.

Although it seems unlikely, before learning about or reading Jen Bervin’s work I had thought of the similar idea, making individual poems using selected lines from famous authors’ published works. I think that’s why I’m so attracted to Bervin’s unique style and creativity, because I too had thought it to be clever and ingenious.