Your Very Ownby John NymanPublished by JackPine PressReview by Elena Bentley$30.00 ISBN 9781927035443 As soon as I saw Your Very Own by John Nyman, I knew I had to read it. Because what 80s and 90s kid didn’t love reading the Choose Your Own Adventure series? I certainly did. Now, as an adult, I also love erasure poetry, and this chapbook published by JackPine Press is a delightful combination of both. Nyman, a visual poet and erasurist with a PhD in theory and criticism, calls himself “a theorist posing as an artist.” For those unfamiliar with erasure (sometimes called whiteout or blackout poetry), it’s a form of poetry where the poet or visual artist removes certain words from the original work; thus, producing a new poem. Your Very Own uses as its source text Choose Your Own Adventure #43: Grand Canyon Odyssey (1985) by Jay Leibold and Don Hedin. Divided into three sections “composed of three voices, or three ventures,” Your Very Own acts as “a kind of excavation.” “Much of what it excavates,” writes Nyman, “are products of a worldview that is cruel, ignorant, unjust, and violent.” Nyman trusts that we, as readers, not only “see this worldview as…