There was a time when the progressive poetry community in Philadelphia consisted entirely of Gil Ott, Rachel Blau DuPlessis & Toby Olson. DuPlessis has been a pioneer at everything she has done. Her ongoing long poem Drafts is proving to be one of the major poetic achievements of our time.

 

The Alphabet for Rosenbach: K

 

Kith and Kin

cattle and Kine

Milton’s hair

provokes Keats’ rhyme.

 

K will leap from lines like X.

One WunderKammer fetish boxed

in apparatuses of keep

will rocK your socKs, cue your sex,

hit the Keister, KicK the moon.

Yo! Kiss my wrinKled

Bonnie Doon.

 

Lips that marK a rosy barb

Kiss me into Kismet parK.

Greta’s Kiss on Miss M’s garb.

Kiss my stocKing, kiss my shoe.

Kiss my complete thing you do.

 

K is found in KnocK and Know.

though it’s hard to make it show.

K is for Potassium.

K comes from the hollow hand.

K the Kumquat that it holds.

Jot and tittle, dotty com.

KnicK-KnacKs elf museum shelf.

Click the Klaxon, KinK the molds.

CooK your Kohl to O your eye.

See whole alphabets pass by.

 

K will Couple you, K will Double you,

these manu-scraps from Kudzu hives.

This the primary pigment of primer;

this the Kissing cosine twining lives.

 

All Very Letters refract inside the sentence.

Scattered, scattering, Keyhole iotas

open abcdarium armoires.

And at the end, as linK, and blanK, and marK,

a pinK-red ticket discard

falls from the inexhaustible arK.

 

 

 

Dear Ron — amused by your Blog's careful description of the ambiance of the Rosenbach curio cabinet and by our task, as well as by your poem. I am enclosing mine. I found it interesting how this little task was so symbolic of the different ways people think of the nature of the poem; I suspect that is what will be visible in the reading. I mean, the process of accomplishing it, for me, was like a miniaturized version of the larger processes of writing my "real" works. First of all, I was fueled by resistance to my particular vitrine, and more attracted to 3 K's elsewhere — Keats with Milton's hair, the Kiss on the sock, and Knives (in the primer of street chants in your vitrine). Knives disappeared (becoming hives! i.e. a rhyme word). Kiss seemed to be part of what people did as couples and as kin. I began with twin words, but did not moralize this or point it out — kith and kin are the same concept in different English dialect words; same with cattle and kine. (that's where kissing cousin comes from — it is apparently really kith and cousin; I distort that as "kissing cosine"). I was VERY conscious of picking k words and also words with hard-c (pronounced K). Anyway, one of the oddities of "kin" as a rubric is that neither married couples nor gay couples (featured in my vitrine) are technically "kin." They both may become families that create kin. They are more like "twins" or doubles. But anyway, I was struck (in your poem too) at how chant or primer or a nursery rhyme was one of the immediate and provocative dictions or tones to assume. Of course then the call inside my practice to maximize sound, puns/wit, to intensify and enrich each word choice sort of vibrated between issues of sound and issues of rhythm/syntax while making a meaning (as it always does for me).

 

Intellectually, I was struck with 2 things — the absolute fetish-y nature of these museum objects, perhaps even including texts and manuscript (not to speak of the baseball). Thus, bec of fetish, focusing on that sock with kiss became necessary. And second, I was struck with the way any part of the alphabet calls to all other parts, once you isolate "a" letter as such. Hence, I wanted to do something like Ronald Johnson and maximize the number of allusions to other letters of the alphabet, visually (K looks like X) and in puns (put a circle around = O; See = C). Of course I was all over the dictionary with K, trying to get some odd K words to play with. I didn't have enough page/time to do this totally — either to maximize K words or to pun on other letters — this poem is already too long (and has a fuck you, too bad attitude to that fact), but/so I couldn't go on with it because it would be much too long. I typed this version out with capital K for each K, but I think it looks odd (and I think I missed a few, also!). See you,

 

Rachel