[Wgcp-whc] Wg/CP--minutes of Duplessis visit

[richard.deming at yale.edu]

Dear Friends,

Last Friday we were joined by Rachel Blau Duplessis to discuss her work. As
Duplessis insisted she is "a feminist and a poet, but not a feminist poet," and
sees gender as a probe into modernist poetics.  Indeed, she locates herself as a
late modernist poet. She discussed her lifework Drafts in terms of
magnitude--rather than a sequence she sees it as a poem written over and over
in the same spot, one poem occurring over the next.  In writing the work over
time she is thus placing a temporally inflected thing in space.


 In advance of her visit, we sent her a number of questions to help frame our
conversation when she arrived.  Duplessis wrote out extensive answers to these
questions so that she could fully inhabit the direction of our thinking about
her work.  While our discussion was spontaneous and lively and decidedly
organic (she was never reading from notes), I did inquire whether she would be
willing to share those responses via our listserv.  I believe that the
responses are as compelling and thoughtful as our discussion and that this more
or less serves as a record of what transpired.  Thus, instead of a full report I
send this as attachment, as well as some places where one can follow more of
Duplessis's work. Rachel did want to indicate that these are notes and not
fully realized.  Again, however, they work terrifically as a record of her
thinking and her engagement with us.

Many thanks to Rachel for her wonderfully generative visit.
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