Parades (An Erasure Love Poem From the First Two Books of Paradise Lost)

When Ronald Johnson wrote his wonderful erasure, RADI OS, based on the first four books of Milton’s epic, he wrote it without a narrative structure. Each page is a stand-alone text. His innovative work is, essentially, a hymn to joy. Parades is a loosely narrative erasure pulled from the erotic language within Milton’s greatest poem. His epic of actual fire and suppressed fire has been winnowed down to word clusters, images, and the open chasms of blank spaceIn terms of method, let me quote what Paul Metcalf said in his introductory note to Zip Odes. “I have allowed myself liberty in punctuation, in placing the words on the page.” The words are Milton’s, reshaped and re-imagined. Any faults are my own.