Jake Rose

Jake Rose is a poet and MFA candidate in Creative Writing at UC Davis.

The Art of the Death is a book of erasure that emerged from a desire to materially confront grief, loss, and anger during the coronavirus pandemic.  Using Donald Trump’s 1987 bestselling book The Art of the Deal as a base text, The Art of the Death records the date and cumulative coronavirus death toll on each page beginning January 20th, 2020, and ending January 20th, 2021, while erasing the text to create an extended soliloquy in the former president’s voice.  Taking up Solmaz Sharif’s recent claim that “the proliferation of erasure as a poetic tactic….is happening alongside a proliferation…of it as a state tactic”[1], the book speaks in conversation with the many state erasures the pandemic has witnessed: from the removal of coronavirus tracking data in government dashboards to the extensive loss of life and livelihood.  The Art of the Death, whose first and last pages are sealed with the author’s own blood, attempts to construct a new and deeply personal narrative of the last year’s events by creating lyric fragments, confessions, questions, and silences that resonate with meaning.  Influenced by works of erasure from poets like Jordan Abel, Mary Ruefle, Solmaz Sharif, and M. NourbeSe Philip, the book’s project is to reclaim, subvert, and recontextualize language in order to discover its hidden edges and omissions.  In addition to the original bound version, a loose-leaf copy has been made in order to digitize the book, and is available for reading below.  The project took place over 11 months and used a total of 74 black markers.  Please visit theartofthedeath.com for more photographs, information, or questions for the author.