Most of the staff of HOW(ever)
L-R: Bev Dahlen, Susan Gevirtz, DuPlessis, Frances Jaffer, Fraser

Kathleen Fraser & Rachel Blau DuPlessis

“The Tradition of Marginality”

A Talk @ St. Marks

1985

Fraser                        DuPlessis

Discussion

Alice Notley

in conversation with

Rachel Blau DuPlessis

@ Temple 2001

ModPo:

The Robert Frost Debate

with Al Filreis, Taije Silverman, John Timpane,

Rachel Blau DuPlessis & Bob Perelman

Kelly Writers House, October 2012

Talking Tender Buttons

Al Filreis, Rachel Blau DuPlessis,
Bob Perelman, Julia Bloch & I
talk Gertrude Stein’s 1914 classic text

Introducing Surge

Mickey Mouse is mentioned twice in Louis Zukofsky’s “A,” on pages 63 & 283 in the UC Press edition, a fact we know – and can verify – because it appears in the book’s index, a curious feature composed by Zukofsky, albeit with contributions & some prodding from the ever-present Celia, who – like Paul, the Zukofskys’ lone child – is a constant, even over-bearing presence in the latter stages of that long poem, although neither appear in its index. Rachel Blau DuPlessis, in her brilliant, subtle, combative Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry, notes just how rare it is for a poet to provide an index for his or her own poem, identifying Zukofsky’s as “the actual final section in the book.” She traces this “paratext’s” roots back to Zukofsky’s “Poem Beginning ‘The’,” a parody of Eliot’s self-important annotations that DuPlessis characterizes as having been Zukofsky’s “calling card” to Ezra Pound.

DuPlessis notes that, having permitted Pound to hack away at the body of The Waste Land,

Rae Armantrout, Laura Elrick

& Rachel Blau DuPlessis

close reading

Catherine Wagner

Rachel Blau DuPlessis
in Auckland, New Zealand
March 2012

Draft 49: Turns
(Turns 1) (Turns 2)

Draft 51: Clay Songs

Draft 53: Eclogue

Draft 74: Wanderer

Draft 87: Trace Elements

Draft 102: One-on-One

Draft 103: Punctum

Draft 109: Wall Newspaper

Rachel Blau DuPlessis & Tony Lopez
reading at
The Poetry Project
November 7, 2012

A celebration of the
poetry & criticism of
Rachel Blau DuPlessis

With Bob Perelman, Libbie Rifkin,
Eric Keenaghan, Ron Silliman,
Rachel Blau DuPlessis,
Jena Osman, Brian Teare,
Holly Bittner, C.A. Conrad,
Thomas Devaney, Sarah Dowling,
Ryan Eckes, Lucia Gbaya-Kanga,
Pattie McCarthie, Michelle Taransky,
Heather Thomas, Kevin Varrone
& Eli Goldblatt

Talking with Rachel Blau DuPlessis
@ Ryerson University, Toronto
(Margaret Christakos is the interlocutor)

plus

17 pieces for (& by)
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
(being the documenta of
the DuPlessis fest @ Temple
this past October)

Happy Birthday,
Rachel Blau DuPlessis

A visionary practice of cultural critique:
Interviewing Rachel Blau DuPlessis 

Photo by Melody Holmes

My thanks to CA Conrad to reprint this from the PhillySound blog where it originally appeared.

Over the years Rachel Blau DuPlessis has written and said things which have struck flint in me, so I was of course happy when she agreed to take time out of her busy schedule for this conversation. There are few people alive today (there's no doubt in my mind that this is more than safe to say) who know as much about poetry as she does, and I don't just mean as someone who catalogs information, but someone who has a true sense of historic, political, social and economic aspects of where poetry emerges in these various contexts of our world. She overwhelms with what she knows, and inspires us TO GET KNOWING MORE and to sharpen our skills. In particular her role as an activist for women's rights and how this rubbed against her poems from the different sides of her earlier years is what I mostly ask her to talk about here, as you will see. Rereading the text today in preparation for publication, it's clear to me that she is talking about many things which have been ignored, BUT ARE VITAL TO our better understanding with a wider lens those various political and literary movements we think we have already figured out for ourselves. This is my way of saying this is important! And I'm happy to say too that it's a very enjoyable read!

CAConrad
Spring Equinox, 2008
Philadelphia

CACONRAD:
Rachel, you've said that when you were starting out in poetry that you were, "Too feminist for the Objectivists, and too Objectivist for the feminists." I've heard similar things from other experimental women poets of your generation, like Alexandra Grilikhes for instance. When I first met Alexandra she was always complaining that she had to chop out her own patch in the feminist and gay and lesbian literary worlds. She also said that in many ways it was her defiance to write what she knew she wanted to and had to write that defined her, as much as it also strengthened her writing, this time of struggle.