Open lecture by Professor Brian Reed, Department of English, University of Washington. Since the turn of the millennium, a number of poets have begun composing verse by taking pre-existing texts and selectively deleting words, phrases, sentences, and even whole sections. Does it make sense to call such poets "writers" in anything but a very loose sense, since, instead of generating text, they remove it? Moreover, since they give us nothing but passages of borrowed language with the original word order preserved intact, can we say that they are sharing their unique thoughts, experiences, and emotions? This talk will argue that today's poetry-by-subtraction is best understood as an inventive response to information overload. 2/08/2012.