Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Dog-Eared Poetry: Three Works by Erica Baum

Poetry is everywhere, especially in places you would least expect it to be. Even the most mundane texts — be it a news article or street advertising — have poetry within them. Such is the sentiment conveyed by writers involved with the “found poetry” genre, most famously explored by Williams Carlos Williams in his epic, “Paterson.”

Erica Baum’s recent collection “Dog Ear” introduces a new direction for the found poetry experiment. By photographing and magnifying dog-eared page corners, this poet-photographer comes up with a series of witty, complex poems, three of which are featured on The Arty Semite today.

Unlike more traditional sources for found poetry, which is usually discovered in public places, dog ears are extremely private — one reader’s experiences with a given edition of a given book. As Kenneth Goldsmith puts it in the introduction: “The dog ear is site-specific: like its namesake, it stays forever close and loyal to its master, embedded in a history of a specific volume.”

Page-folding gestures lie close to the heart of the reading experience, an expression of desire to remember and cherish a bit of striking text. In this gesture Baum sees an unconsciously poetic act. The dog-eared images presented in the book are extremely readable; in fact, they are readable in a variety of ways and — literally — directions. As Goldsmith points out, “the idea that there’s no one correct way to engage with an artwork is at the heart of Erica Baum’s ‘Dog Ear’ series.”

Often, the meanings framed by Baum gravitate towards irony, aesthetics and metaphysics. The first poem, “How Long,” is apocalyptic in a way reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s parables or Samuel Becket’s “Waiting for Godot.” The poem “Wild Tumult” echoes with biblical rhetoric, as in Psalm 65:5: “The roaring of the billows and the wild tumult of the nations…” Juxtaposed with the word “inspected” positioned vertically on the side, the poem proposes a divine (or poetic) perspective: a remote and contemplative observation of the world’s wild tumult.

Baum does not reveal which books she dog-ears, and trying to guess is certainly part of the excitement her book offers. The source for “Metaphysical Sky” for instance, can be found in Jean Genet’s “Miracle of the Rose.” In her version, Baum enhances Genet’s philosophical meditation with a sense of vertigo, as readers’ eyes follow a horizontal line hurling abruptly downward.


How Long


Wild Tumult


Metaphysical Sky

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.