"I stripped Shakespeare's sonnets bare to the "nets" to make the space of the poems open, porous, possible - a divergent elsewhere. when we write poems, the history of poetry is with us, pre-inscribed in the white of the page ; when we read or write poems, we do it with or against this palimpsest.", écrit Jen Bervin à la fin du volume.
Illustration, avec le deuxième sonnet (qui est le premier de Nets) :
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
Nets est publié par Ugly Duckling Press (2004) ; cinquième tirage en 2010 : 5000 exemplaires ... un best-seller !
