Features

Drafting beyond the ending

On Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Rachel Blau DuPlessis in 2007 in Philadelphia. Photo by Robert S. DuPlessis.
Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s “Draft 94: Mail Art”; DuPlessis in 2007 in Philadelphia. Photo by Robert S. DuPlessis.

 

but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word ‘and’ trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes … — William James

To say that Rachel Blau DuPlessis has built her entire poetic project on the logic of the provisional and the contingent is no exaggeration. And reader, make no mistake — she has married us to this process. In the School of DuPlessian Midrash every seam and suture is exposed as a subject of instigation cum investigation. Investigation, in Drafts, is not simply a prod to the ethical; it’s heuristic: in teaching us how to read Drafts, Drafts teaches us how to read. (So maybe it’s chiasmatic, too?)

There is no reconciliation

"So Good" (2011) and "Self Portrait" (2010) by Brandon Downing
"So Good" (2011) and "Self Portrait" (2010) by Brandon Downing

Jacket2 features a review of Brandon Downing’s Lake Antiquity by Luke Bloomfield, and a gallery of recent collages by Downing.

Look and look again

Twelve New Zealand poets

Emma Smith, "Hecate" (2010).
Emma Smith, "Hecate" (2010).

I once heard a story about a biology teacher who asked a student to look closely at a fish, then write a description of it. The student took a good look at the fish, then wrote down everything he could think of to say about it.

After the student had brought back his description, the teacher told him to look at the fish again, and to write another description of it. This time the student took it home and went into real depth about everything he could find out about that species of fish, as well as this particular specimen.