Drafts 1-38, Toll.

294 Pages·2011·3.066 MB·English

by  DuPlessis, Rachel Blau

DRAFTS 1-38 , TOL L
Wesleyan Poetry
DRAFTS 1-38 ,
TOLL
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Wesleyan University Press
MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT
Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459
Copyright © 2001 by Rachel Blau DuPlessis
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 21
Book design by Dean Bornstein
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau.
Drafts 1-38, toll / Rachel Blau DuPlessis.
p. cm. — (Wesleyan poetry)
ISBN 0-8195-6484-2 (cloth: alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8195-6485-0
(pbk.: alk. paper)
I. Title. II. Series.
PS3554.U566 068 2001
8ii'.54—dc2i
2001003507
Cover photograph by Sandy Sorlein.
... the very word is like a bell
To toll...
John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
Feeling this, what should be the form
Which the ungainliness already suggested
Should take?
Louis Zukofsky, '"Mantis': An Interpretation"
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowledgments IX

Draft:: I t i
Draft 2: Sh e II
Draft 3: Of 19
Draft 4: I n 24
Drafts: Ga p 28
Draft 6: Midrush
33
Draft 7: M e 40
DraftS: Th e 45
Draft 9: Page 52
Draft X: Letters 57
Draft 11: Schwa 75
Draft 12: Diasporas 81
Draft 13: Haibun 87
Draft 14: Conjunctions 92
Draft 15: Little 100
Draft 16: Title 103
Draft 17: Unnamed 108
Draft 18: Traduction 114
Draft 19: Working Conditions 121
Draft 20: Incipit . 130
Draft 21: Cardinals 134
Draft 22: Philadelphia Wireman 141
Draft 23: Findings 145
Draft 24: Ga p 158
Draft 25: Segno 162
Draft 26: M-m-ry 166
Draft 27: Athwart 169
Draft 28: Facing Pages i?4
Draft 29: Intellectual Autobiography 179
Draft XXX: Fosse 187
Draft 31: Serving Writ 193
Draft 32: /?e«g a 194
Draft 33: Deixis 219
Draft 34: Recto 236
Draft 35: Verso 242
Draft 36: Cewf o 249
Draft 37: Praedelle 255
Draft 3 8: Georgics and Shadow 261
Notes 269
viii
Acknowledgments
A 1990 Temple University Faculty Summer Grant, and a 1990
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship
in Poetry, helped provide some of the time during which I com-
posed this work. I also thank both The Fund for Poetry for a
spirit-sustaining grant in December 199 3 and my colleagues for
awarding me the 1998-1999 Temple University Faculty Award for
Creative Achievement. I owe a great acknowledgment to Suzanna
Tamminen of Wesleyan University Press for the appearance of this
work as a unit.
The Drafts in this book collect the series of autonomous, but
interdependent canto-like poems on which I have been engaged
since 1985. The pre-Drafts work , called "Writing" (1984-1985),
and the first two Drafts were originally published in Tabula Rosa
in 1987, Drafts 3-14 were published in 1991, and Drafts i$-XXX,
The Fold appeared in 1997, all from Potes & Poets Press. Hence I
have a great indebtedness to Peter Ganick, the publisher of Potes
& Poets. The French translation of several of the Drafts, called Es-
sais: Quatre Poemes appeared with Un Bureau sur 1'Atlantique,
Editions Creaphis in 1996, translated by Jean-Paul Auxemery and
the translation collective of Royaumont.
These poems initially appeared in the following journals and
chapbooks. Some poems have been revised since their first publi-
cation:
"Draft i: It" and "Draft 2: She," Temblor 5 (1987): 22-33.
"Draft 3: Of," Sulfur 2 0 (Fall 1987): 23-27.
"Draft 4: In," Mandorlal, i (May 1991): 64-68.
"Draft 5: Gap," Conjunctions 13 (Spring 1989): 40-44. "Trouee"
[Draft 5: Gap], Action Poetique 136 (Automne 1994): 15-19
translated by Traduction Collective Royaumont. "Gap" was
anthologized in Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innova-
tive Writing by Women, ed. Mary Margaret Sloan. Jersey
City: Talisman House Press, 1998: 336-341.
IX