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Showing posts with label <b>Rachel Blau DuPlessis</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Rachel Blau DuPlessis</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, January 09, 2003</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Rachel Blau DuPlessis has
told me, on more than one <span class="GramE">occasion, that</span> no writer of
long poems before me apparently commented in any particular detail on the
process of starting or constructing such a work. But DuPlessis has herself done
so, at least partly (&amp; to some degree indirectly), in an essay entitled
&#8220;Haibun: &#8216;Draw Your Draft,&#8217;&#8221; in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.uiowa.edu/uiowapress/holhdand.htm">H.D. and Poets After</a></i>,
edited by </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Don</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">a <span class="SpellE">Krolik</span> <span class="SpellE">Hollenberg</span>. It&#8217;s an interesting volume overall with poets
Alicia <span class="SpellE">Ostriker</span>, </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Robert Kelly</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">, Sharon <span class="SpellE">Doubiago</span>, Frances <span class="SpellE">Jaffer</span>, Kathleen Fraser, Brenda Hillman, Leslie Scalapino, <span class="SpellE">Nate</span> Mackey &amp; Carolyn <span class="SpellE">Forché</span>
in addition to DuPlessis writing on their relationship to Hilda Doolittle, each
in turn followed by a second essay by a scholar on the same topic &#8211; Burt <span class="SpellE">Hatlen</span> contributes the companion to DuPlessis&#8217; essay.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A sample passage:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">No
plan, no design, no schemata. Just a few procedures: placing works on the big
stage of the page, making each <span class="GramE">be</span> itself intact and
autonomous but connected to themselves as they emerged. No continuous
narrative. No myth as explanation. Here <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts</i>
are very different from H.D.&#8217;s long poems and quite related to Objectivist
ethos and poetics. The works are influenced by Objectivist argument and
propositions about reality. That the image is encountered, not found, as Oppen
proposed. That <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i>
and</span> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a </i>(said Zukofsky testily)
are words worth investigating, as suggestive and as staggering in their
implications as any epic or myth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Even though DuPlessis ranges
far beyond just her relationship to H.D., there is no single summation here &#8211;
indeed, DuPlessis warns in an end note, that this account is far from
comprehensive, citing a wide range of other sources &amp; influences as diverse
as Rae Armantrout &amp; Clayton Eshleman.* In an unnumbered note, DuPlessis
comments that &#8220;I also follow the &#8216;hermetic&#8217; encoding in H.D. that involves
having an H and a D in titles that consider her.&#8221; Thus, &#8220;Draft 12: Haibun.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The conjunction of these
factors &#8211; the charged, but non-exclusive discourse with modernism, the concern
with the letter, brought up something very different to mind, a poem,
specifically this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">There is more here than memory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Reading
</span></span><st1:city><st1:place><span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Paterson</span></i></span></st1:place></st1:city><span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">on the bus, back &amp; forth.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span class="GramE">Across the city.</span> <span class="GramE">The 210.</span> <span class="GramE">A man &amp; a city.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I am not a man &amp; this is
not my city.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Williams
though as a guide.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span class="GramE">His universals as particulars,
ideas in things.</span> <span class="GramE">His rhythms.</span> Every rhythmic
shaking (like a belly dancer), splashing (like the <span class="GramE">Falls</span>)
lines. <span class="GramE">Insistences.</span> Insistence on persisting. . . . <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Stuck <span class="SpellE">stuck</span>
<span class="SpellE">stuck</span> the W &#8211; a poem in the new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sulfur </i>began with a quote from Bréton that the surrealists opposed
the W to the V of the visible &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The W atop Woodward&#8217;s &#8211; the
big, brick, block-long (almost &#8211; next building west was Woolworth&#8217;s &#8211; another W
(west a W, was a W)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">These excerpts come from the
very first section of George Stanley&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2385889670">Vancouver,</a></i>
which I found at the very end of his most recent book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.newstarbooks.com/Booksinprint.htm#poetry">At Andy&#8217;s</a></i>,
an echo of how the first of DuPlessis&#8217; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts</i>
appeared at the back of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tabula Rosa</i>
(Potes &amp; Poets, 1987). I&#8217;ve compared </span><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Vancouver</span></i></st1:place></st1:city><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">&amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts </i><a href="http://www.ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2386102935">before</a>,
but these additional layers of correspondence amaze me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">DuPlessis, in &#8220;Haibun,&#8221;
speaks also of memory:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">At a
certain point in this exploration of the <span class="SpellE">rhetorics</span> of
&#8220;drafting&#8221; I realized that I was constructing a texture of déjà vu, a set of
works that mimicked the productions and losses of memory. And that the works
were my own response both to the memorializing function of poetry and to my own
bad memory. &#8220;An exploration of the chaos of memory (obscured, alienated, or
reduced to a range of natural references) cannot be done in the &#8216;clarity&#8217; of a
linear narrative&#8221;** . . . . <span class="GramE">Bad memory.</span> <span class="GramE">Bad dog.</span> <span class="GramE">Bad <span class="SpellE">bad</span>
memory.</span> The poem replicates (but neither reconstructs nor represents) a
space of memory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Part of what amazes me in
these convergences is that if I were to construct a scale of the poets who had
some relation to the journals <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Caterpillar
</i>&amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sulfur</i>, edited by Clayton
Eshleman, according to the degree of Jack Spicer&#8217;s influence perceptible in their
<span class="GramE">poetry,</span> Stanley &amp; DuPlessis would almost be the
opposite extremes. Yet here are two projects that are, if not parallel, at
least so filled with resonances back &amp; forth, that each poem works in part
to illuminate the other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Caveat
lector: my name appears in that list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/sc_add_query.cgi/99/virginia/89005469.ctl">Caribbean
Discourse: Selected Essays</a>, </i>by <span class="SpellE">Edouard</span> <span class="SpellE">Glissant</span>, p. 107. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, December 17, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Looking at Rachel Blau
DuPlessis&#8217; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Draft 1: It </i>again this
morning, I realize that what I&#8217;d previously taken for a more abstract drawing
that comes later in the text is, like the pair of drawn </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Comic Sans MS&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">N</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial;">s at the front, letters, in this instance </span><span class="SpellE"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Comic Sans MS&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Y</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial;">s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">. In
each case, one letter is much larger than the other, with the smaller inscribed
in a wedge of the larger. It&#8217;s funny how you can look at something off &amp; on
for 15 years, before a detail this basic jumps out at you, but there you have it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The </span><span class="SpellE"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Comic Sans MS&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Y</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial;">s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> occur
at the end of one of the more curious passages in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Draft 1</i>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
struggle from whiteness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">into</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
whiteness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">via</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
black wit-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">ness</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="SpellE"><span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">ching</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Nothing in my prior
experience of DuPlessis gives me reason to believe that she has an interest in
what I&#8217;ve called the alternative </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">wis</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">dom traditions, so the appearance of the old Chinese
system of chance divination gets my attention because it is unexpected. </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Furth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">er, the idea of &#8220;black witness&#8221; &#8211; a phrase I can
easily imagine DuPlessis speaking &#8211; refers on a very different level to the
civil rights movement of the 1950s &amp; &#8216;60s. But from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whiteness</i> into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whiteness</i>
suggests that other meanings have to be given precedence here. There is a
discourse of color in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Draft 1</i> that is
worth cataloging: &#8220;sunlight / silver backed,&#8221; &#8220;it / lettered on green up
hillside&#8217;s social lining,&#8221;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>&#8220;Black //
coding inside<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>A / <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">white</b> fold open,&#8221; &#8220;A <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">white</b> house seems / to be a further /
coagulation of mist / Lucite see-thru overlay,&#8221; &#8220;<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">CANO</b>*, can o,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>yes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>no,&#8221; &#8220;&#8217;sea-blazed gold&#8217;,&#8221; &#8220;clouds<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>for fat and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">white</b>,&#8221; &#8220;space <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">white </b>and
open a flat / spot a <span class="SpellE">lite</span> on / it,&#8221; &#8220;Object (pronoun)
/ squeaks its little song its bright <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">white</b>
/ dear dead dark,&#8221; &#8220;theater of the / / page<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">cream</b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>space<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>peaks,&#8221; &#8220;where in the placement of saffron / . . . and black tuft of <span class="SpellE">heide</span>,&#8221; &#8220;one point is to achieve a social momentum of
switched / referents and (merry coral<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">white</b> clover / ding <span class="SpellE">ding</span> <span class="SpellE">ding</span>) commentary,&#8221; &amp;
then this remarkable passage:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">a</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> kind
of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">oran</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">ge it happens<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">a</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> kind
of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">oran</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">ge <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">IT
HAPPENS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">rose</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
rinse, vertical green<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Away
anyway has shadow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;<span class="GramE">a</span> typical Rachel shadow&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">blue</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
starts limb long and torso struggles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">its</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
window when all around there&#8217;s not a single<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">wall</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">,
NO blockages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">hardly</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
stopped at all except by the pleasures<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">of</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
color are you getting the picture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">it</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> <span class="SpellE">hppns</span> BLUEW one from the sequences of looming<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">comes</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>longing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">White &amp; black are of
course unique hues, white figuring as the undifferentiated presence of all
color in light, but as the absence of color in pigmentation. Light/pigment,
white/black, yes/no (</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Comic Sans MS&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Y</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial;">/</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Comic Sans MS&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">N</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial;">), sound/silence &#8211; a string of threshold points
appear to surround &amp; pass through that simplest, most self-effacing of
pronouns. It&#8217;s in this sense that I begin to understand the allusion to the I <span class="SpellE"><span class="GramE">ching</span></span>. Of all pronouns, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it</i> most completely functions as a lens,
directing sight, refracting color, offering nothing (or very little) of itself
as object. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In a way, DuPlessis is
playing with the idea of language&#8217;s ostensible transparency, but only to point
up all the problematic catches, the moments where the signifier itself happens
(or, for that matter, &#8220;<span class="SpellE">hppns</span>&#8221;) &#8211; meaning, sound,
sight, desire, the whole of the world trying to come through &#8211; &#8220;a plot,&#8221; as she
notes, bracketing the phrase in quotation marks, &#8220;a plot / against the reader.&#8221;
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Spanish
for &#8220;white&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, December 16, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Commenting upon George
Stanley&#8217;s excerpt from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2385889670">Vancouver</a></i>
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Poker </i>turned out to bring
goodies in time for the holiday season. </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Kevin Davies</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> sent me a copy of another excerpt from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book One</i> and I was directed to yet another
shining example in the new issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.shampoopoetry.com/ShampooNine/stanley.html">Shampoo</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></i>by <span class="GramE">editor</span> Del
Ray Cross. This last piece has two different descriptions of the late Angela
Bowering that make me envious of those who knew her, as well as further
confirmation of my theory of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vancouver</i>
&amp; the poetry of transit. The poem also has<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;
</span>a wonderful dictum that I suspect Stanley would like to believe &#8211; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">write carelessly </i>&#8211; tho in fact he is one
of the great careful writers of our time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">All of which made me think
of how we begin the longpoem, those of us who do write them, and that one of my
New Years Resolutions for 2003 is to read Rachel Blau DuPlessis&#8217; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.upne.com/0-8195-6485-0.html">Drafts 1-38, Toll</a> </i>with
the kind of long, slow, luxuriating attention that I believe it deserves. So I
got a jump on the new year and sat down &amp; read (reread, really) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Draft 1: It, </i>first in the large Wesleyan
University Press edition, then in the even larger (at least in terms of page
size) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Temblor 5</i> where I first
encountered this poem back in 1987. Way back when, I don&#8217;t think it struck me
how one of the keys to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts </i>was
(or, really, back then, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would be</i>) how
each section always links to a title, most often (but not always) a single word<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> &#8220;Links to a title&#8221; may seem a funny
way of phrasing this, yet I sense that these are not titles in the same way
that, say, &#8220;The Multiversity&#8221; is the title for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Passages 23</i> for Robert Duncan or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paradise</i> is the title of one section of my own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alphabet. </i>As I think becomes clear when reads DuPlessis, every word
for her is always provisional. The monumental aspect of poetry titles seems
something very different &#8211; and yet, these aren&#8217;t &#8220;captions&#8221; either, at least
not in the way that Benjamin distinguishes between those two categories, one
name the work, the other pulling out a highlight or foregrounding some element
within. My own sense here at least at this point, is that DuPlessis uses these
words &amp; phrases to identify territories in the vicinity of which the poems
then work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In 1987, I knew DuPlessis as
one of several poets whom I might characterize as post-Objectivist, a grouping
as diverse as John Taggart, Michael Heller &amp; Armand Schwerner. DuPlessis
was notable also for being the one woman who seemed actively drawn to this
literary tradition. But nothing in her (first?) book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wells</i> (<span class="SpellE">Montemora</span> Supplement, 1980)
prepared me for this suddenly expansive use of the page. Perhaps if I had read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gypsy / Moth</i></span> <span style="font-family: Arial;">(Coincidence Press, 1984) more attentively, I would
have realized that its title page, assigning the two poems of that volume to a
longer project, the &#8220;History of Poetry&#8221; (and with the word <s>Keats</s> both
printed and <span class="SpellE">X&#8217;d</span> out right in the center of the page),
was in fact announcing DuPlessis&#8217; taking on of something of greater scale, not
just in size but also in intellectual ambition. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">DuPlessis is more explicit
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tabula Rosa </i>(Potes &amp; Poets,
1987), which includes 17 pieces from the &#8220;History of Poetry,&#8221; including the two
David Sheidlower had published in the earlier book. The section &#8211; it forms the
first half of the book &#8211; has an epigram that is telling: &#8220;She cannot forget the
history of poetry / because it is not hers.&#8221; That was the clearest statement
yet of DuPlessis&#8217; own sense of herself as writing as an outsider, a position
that will very much inform <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts. </i>The
second half of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tabula Rosa</i> is, in
fact, entitled &#8220;Drafts,&#8221; &amp; reprints the first two from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Temblor</i>. But it also contains a serial poem, &#8220;Writing,&#8221; that, with
commentary, runs 30 pages, longer than the two sections of DuPlessis&#8217; new
longpoem. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;Writing&#8217;s&#8221; ultimate
relation to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts </i>isn&#8217;t self-evident
&#8211; it&#8217;s not included here in the Wesleyan edition. Reading it, it feels (very
much as the &#8220;History of Poets&#8221; does for me also) as a necessary step for DuPlessis
to clear the ground on which she could begin the true longpoem. Already in
&#8220;Writing,&#8221; DuPlessis is moving away from standard type-driven forms.
Handwritten in one section are these sentiments: &#8220;wanting to have her book
virtually nameless / what is the most transparent name?&#8221; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tabula Rosa</i>, in spite of its pun, &#8220;Writing&#8221; and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts </i>all seem possible responses to
that question. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tabula Rosa </i>and the Wesleyan edition, DuPlessis will publish three
more collections of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts: <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">A volume from
Potes &amp; Poets entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts</i>,
containing numbers 3 through 14<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">A large &amp;
wonderfully designed Singing Horse Press edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Draft X: Letters</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Another volume
from Potes &amp; Poets entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts
1-XXX, <span class="GramE">The</span> Fold</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;It&#8221; is as contra-auspicious
a title one might propose for the opening of a longpoem, which is the point.
The poem itself begins with an initial &#8220;N.&#8221; that is then repeated, followed by
two hand drawn <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">N</i>s, large &amp;
asymmetrical, giving the page as much a sketch of a mountaintop (my immediate
thought, seeing them, was Wordsworth&#8217;s alps &#8211; Bunting&#8217;s version of same also &#8211;
although to a later reader the use of the hand here would no doubt call up Bob
Grenier&#8217;s own &#8220;scrawl&#8221; texts*), followed by a section divider, which in this
piece is a pair of equal signs. Thus signs &amp; sounds are all that we are
given in the very first section. There is not even one vowel. &amp; the
consonant chosen (no accident here) comes more than halfway through the
alphabet itself. There&#8217;s no way to make a word out of this, the way one could
stretch &#8220;m&#8221; into &#8220;<span class="SpellE">mmmmmm</span>.&#8221; The use of the period with
each &#8220;N&#8221; reinforces its &#8220;vocal but <span class="SpellE">subverbal</span>&#8221;
qualities, just as the mountain tops carry us back to a time when language is
as much picture as conventional representation of sound. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Think of every longpoem you
have ever read &#8211; none has an opening passage even remotely like this. No jewels
&amp; diamonds, no round of fiddles, no going down to the ships. The closest I
can imagine is </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Duncan</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8217;s reference to a cat&#8217;s purr, but that is at the
start of the second <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Passages, </i>not the
first. So, even if we buy the scrawled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">N</i>s
as mountain tops, any allusion to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Prelude</i> is at best an echo that tugs ever so faintly in the work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The second passage is
everything the first one is not:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">and</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
something spinning in the bushes<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>the
past<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">dismembered</span><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>sweetest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">dizzy</span> chunk
of song<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Here
suddenly we have miracles, memory, history, fragmentation, qualities, <span class="GramE">the</span> whole idea that song, for example, might be
characterized as a &#8220;dizzy chunk.&#8221; When I get to this moment, I do in fact hear
an echo from the start of a longpoem, but on a very different order: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I thought that if I could put
it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to
leave all out would be <span class="GramE">another,</span> and truer way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">clean-washed</span>
sea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The flowers were.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">John Ashbery&#8217;s &#8220;The New
Spirit,&#8221; the start of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Three Poems </i>(which
I will always read as one), presents a very similar opposed pair &#8211; but note
that DuPlessis has reversed the order, or at the very least suggested that
possibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">One
image or theme that runs through this passage is light: &#8220;all the sugar is
reconstituted: / sunlight&#8221; or &#8220;light this / governed being:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span><span class="GramE">that</span>?&#8221; This question of embodiment leads to the
section&#8217;s last stanza, which transforms a <span class="SpellE">Zukofskian</span>
moment of closure that is almost stunning in how directly DuPlessis gets to it&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">plunges</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> into every object<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">a</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> word and then some<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>chuck
and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="SpellE"><span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">pwhee</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> wee<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">half</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">tones</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">have</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> tune&#8217;s <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">heft</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There
are no half measures in these two passages &#8211; DuPlessis takes you right smack
into the heart of writing with all of its epistemological &amp; ontological
questions in what amounts to a &#8220;take no prisoners&#8221; directness. The ambition of
the moment is both sweeping and </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">brea</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">th-taking. We are </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">ind</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">eed at the cusp of a great adventure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* I&#8217;m not sure whether any of Grenier&#8217;s scrawl works, which
I believe existed by the mid 1980s, had appeared anywhere that DuPlessis might
have seen them at this point in history. My guess is not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Sunday, December 08, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Rachel Blau DuPlessis gave a
reading Tuesday night at Kelly Writers House at Penn &amp; it was wonderful. It
was wonderful because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts</i>, the
long poem that DuPlessis has been writing for the past dozen or so years is a
rich, intelligent, multi-faceted project that offers a deep vision of what
poetry at its very best can be. It was wonderful because DuPlessis has the
experience to know what works in a reading &amp; how best to deliver her work &#8211;
to hear her read is to be in the presence of a master. And it was wonderful
because DuPlessis gave herself a full 45 minutes to read. It was a remarkably
short &amp; intense 45 minutes &amp; could have gone easily for another 30
without seeming the least bit long. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I recall Bruce Andrews years
ago telling me, only half in jest, that you could tell a West Coat language
poet by the fact that they read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">forever</i>
whenever they gave readings in New York. The underlying reality, I think, was
that readings in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">San
  Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, at
least in the late 1970s through the mid-80s, often ran 40 minutes or more per
reader. On the East Coast, two-person readings were (and still are) often
completed within an hour, even with a break between readers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It&#8217;s not that everyone on
one coast was desperate to get to the bar after the reading in order to gossip,
flirt, philosophize &amp; schmooze. In the comparatively hard-drinking &#8216;70s
&amp; &#8216;80s, both coasts had that routine down to a fine art, whether the
post-reading establishment of choice was the <span class="SpellE">Ab</span> <span class="SpellE">Zum</span> <span class="SpellE">Zum</span> Room on San Francisco&#8217;s
Haight Street or the Ukrainian National Home (&#8220;<span class="SpellE">Ukes</span>&#8221;)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>on Second Avenue in New York, or Spec&#8217;s or
Tosca&#8217;s in North Beach. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">No, I think that people in
San Francisco had something of a different idea in those days about what you
might get out of a reading, how you approached it as a listener as well as from
a reader&#8217;s perspective. The real reading doesn&#8217;t begin until the reader can
hear the audience audibly shifting in their chairs &#8211; it is literally a matter
of body language &#8211; settling in. The audience isn&#8217;t completely engulfed in the
reader&#8217;s voice or world until about twenty minutes into the reading, which &#8211; if
the reader is any good &#8211; is when the event begins to take on a special quality,
when the ear can hear as well as the eye can see, when a good poem genuinely
can transport a listener not only into a different universe or world, but into
the most minute points of the text, all those little features that are
inaudible until then. For example, how often DuPlessis uses &#8220;so&#8221; as a connector
between sentences &#8211; perhaps her one Poundian trait &#8211; and the relative elevation
in rhetorical tone that one little word lends to a text. I&#8217;d never noticed that
before &amp; I&#8217;m not at all certain that I would have if DuPlessis had only
read one section of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts</i></span> <span style="font-family: Arial;">&amp; kept the reading to 15 or 20 minutes.</span> <span style="font-family: Arial;">Nor might I have noticed how she pronounces certain words
differently than I do, such as &#8220;barbaric.&#8221; For her, those first two syllables
rhyme, whereas I flatten the &#8220;a&#8221; in the second syllable almost to a nasal
twang: &#8220;bar-bear-ic.&#8221; I&#8217;m not sure what that might be telling us about our
relative histories and placement on a linguistic geography, but the reading
made me realize that, intellectually at least, I prefer her version.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Any good reading brings so
much new information to a listener who knows, at least in general terms, the
work of the reader. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Draft 12:
Diasporas </i>(p. 85 of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Drafts 1-38,
Toll, </i>Wesleyan, 2001), DuPlessis filled in the blanks of &#8220;X---<span class="SpellE">xes</span>&#8221; as &#8221;Xeroxes,&#8221; subtly registering that company&#8217;s
well-known allergy against the generic use of their corporate name. The word
ties that line more completely to the discussion of photocopying and
intellectual property &amp;, frankly, it&#8217;s obvious on the page &#8211; I&#8217;d just been
clueless previously. So the reading offered me new depths &amp; twists,
throughout. A good reading of familiar work is not like seeing a favorite movie
the second, third, or fifth time nearly so much as it is seeing an entirely new
production, say, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lear</i> that enables
you to imagine the play from a whole new vantage point. Which isn&#8217;t the poet&#8217;s
necessarily, although it is one very much informed by how the poet understands
his or her work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">San
  Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> in
the very early 1970s was, in a curious way, virgin territory for poetry
readings. There had been a lull in the scene for a few years &#8211; I might trace it
back to the death of Jack Spicer &amp; the diaspora of poets up to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Vancouver</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, but since I wasn&#8217;t really old enough to see the
&#8220;before,&#8221; I&#8217;m just guessing. In 1972, however, there were only two regular
reading series in town: one out at </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">San Francisco</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">State</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">,
mostly held in the daytime mid-week, constrained by academic class schedules
&amp; inaccessible to people who worked; the second held at the Intersection,
then on </span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="font-family: Arial;">Union
  Street</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-family: Arial;"> in </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">North</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">Beach</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">, held on Tuesday evenings. The series at
Intersection in those days was erratic &amp; unfocused. They could have Michael
Ondaatje or Jim Carroll one week and then go three months before anything
interesting showed up again. The result was that there was no continuity of
audience from Tuesday to Tuesday, the key to the sort of ongoing feedback that
makes a reading series more than just a presentation forum. Short-run series,
such as one held in the press offices of Empty Elevator Shaft books out in
upper </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span class="SpellE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Noe</span></span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">Valley</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> (where I first met Kathy Acker), were relatively rare. So when Michael
Bono &amp; Barrett Watten started up a reading series at the Grand Piano coffee
house in the Haight, there really wasn&#8217;t any established reading protocol.
Nobody told anybody that readings needed to be 20 minutes or less. So people
gravitated naturally to what proved most valuable. <span class="GramE">Which in
turn meant that the standard reading was two poets reading for 45 minutes each
with a healthy break in between &amp; everyone retiring to some common venue
for discussion afterwards.</span> A reading that took less than two hours was
considered a rip-off of your $1 donation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I think that some of what
came out of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">San
  Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> in
the mid-1970s can be traced back to people giving more in-depth readings &amp;
the audience feedback that ensued. This wasn&#8217;t restricted to just four or five people
&#8211; it was pretty much everybody, regardless of aesthetic. One ironic result of
course is that when some out-of-towners came in &amp; gave short readings, it
made everybody in SF think that these <span class="SpellE">auslanders</span>
weren&#8217;t really working very hard. Which no doubt was unfair &amp; really
ultimately inaccurate, but it reinforced the idea that everybody locally was
trying their very hardest &amp; that the result was turning out to be something
special. <span class="GramE">That sense of something special going on also
propelled people to strive to do both more &amp; better.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So that in a nutshell is my
secret sauce for how to make a scene a really happening one, just make the
readings <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">longer</i> &amp; get everyone to
go out for a drink &amp; a chat afterwards (Writers House often has a sumptuous
spread, which is a perfectly acceptable alternative). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It was wonderful to hear
DuPlessis the other evening give the kind of reading that brings out all these
extra layers in her work, especially to an audience that included Eli <span class="SpellE">Goldblatt</span>, Al Filreis, Tom Devaney, Jena Osman, Samuel R. <span class="SpellE">Delany</span>, </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Bob Perelman</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">
&amp; some 40 or so other very lucky people. &amp; what made me happiest was
that she gave herself &#8211; and us in the audience &#8211; the time to really hear that
work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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