 |
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
from Drafts |
from Drafts
1. “On tap,
for micro-brews
it’s Cock or
Moose.”
“What else?” reconstitutes
their list “O
we have Edge.
“Edge is frail like a Witte.”
“I’ll take an
Edge.”
Sallow white bitters
narrow flute
is the pledge
you’ve just ordered
eyes closing, gummy eyes.
Dream of a woman’s
dream of a work.
Whose rage is
this?
Whose child is this?
“answer the dawn
will you”
webbing its gaps
with ambiguous
light
who tried on another plane
to write one
fragment
starting that, starting out
“a woman’s voice
is nakedness.”
2. Feed that mother cream
for loss of flesh
for loss of all her
emblems and trials,
since her scrolls once
(upon a former time)
unwound unwinding over dell
and dale
and all the white roads
thick and thirst
with crust and dust were saying
(so we heard and
felt)
“rosy cress, rock cress, scabious
all pink,
o fennel and thyme”
(that, wanderers, we wanted
to be so) for
who could have predicted
the end would be total erasure—
except for smallest ratios of mark.
If songbits could
be found
a classicist would risk her heart
undressing (for instance) some
leathery mummy
to unroll brindled
linen strips
the body-swaddling bandage upon which
there might once have been writ
kol isha
one syntack of her honey-clove
litotes.
3. (scabious)
(it cured scabies)
a pink flower
small among the teasels
that fuzz grey
a path is any day, “rough
brown stones cracked and edgy lying
in broken scrubby fields sometimes”
with unreadable stain. But
there’s every position to take—we’re
nicks in the surface—once walled and girled—
“say to myself Frances look at the world.”
Pick another little nothing weed
and fix its mixed details
matched to pictures and accounts:
not corn spurrey
not dovesfoot cranebill
not herb robert (“often the whole plant is suffused in red”)
maybe ivy-leaved speedwell (has a red stem only)—
too small even to care about
yet stubborn for its kenning-solid name
with its particular fronds, features, swirls, counts
that flatten inside out
clasping mists of loss so close
and hid so deep
in the broken spine
that pressed down place where flowers fold:
between the pock-marked pages of a folio.
4. Trailing our fueled-up smog
out to the horizon upon take-off
unpressurized noise
and thin metal sheeting
encircle whistling stories from the ground
pearly up, pearly down
the here: why am I up here
the there: why am I anywhere
any statement,
any microsleight,
regular tone or
so-called foreign
is “an oversimplification of the situation
we actually are in.”
5. Hunger for the next letter
makes the letters
difficult. Edge
of silk
red box
holding
unfinished elements
guttering words
losses of small “its”
of possessiveness
loss of the it in it’s
only the yod-ish apostrophe
left and
a small hiss
how she left like that
stripped, flattened, averse
flayed down
all in all
how incredibly
simple her bad news was
so
that was it.
It couldn’t have
been worse.
6. Any corner of any thing
is bread
in the eye and mouth
of desire
but it’s also stone;
not some mosaic’s
dainty pretty, glistering golden on the dome
flat green where sheep are done
counterfactually
white, but small hard die-hard bones
and bread’s lack-
ravenous slices
squeezed. Pellets. Gritty pebbles,
scatter her.
Scatter her,
and then gather her back.
7. Un mir zaynen alle shvester
ai ai alle shvester
twists of business
half their breasts once had
sequestered
who could list them
from the vestige
azoy vi Rokhl, Rus, un Ester
names like Rachel, Ruth, and Esther.
8. All oily and garlic nasturtium’s pepper orange alizarin
golden needles
buds of coral, claspt close and amber
strewn on the greens
studied nonchalance
a salad day.
What did it amount to?
being there or not there
a pile of ashes orphaned
or bare feet sloshing through the shallow part near shore,
and the teeming nakedness inside, with its
fervent designs on the word
head of one, dead bug 3 parts, 6 legs
things destroyed gapping eyes, while
“the sacred eye is depicted with wings”
and “thought can make a sound in the ear”
for these offerings touch a nerve,
touch the backwash
of longing,
so sing in me
you tricksy manytepid and troping troops of song.
We wanted poetry known for lavishness and brightness
fierce streaky brightness—
plus minimize dreck
and the too-pretty by far
we wanted access
open places out of solid praxis
ate our joy and joyous anger held our, gripped our laser
hunger
we wanted women
back channel me
9. She couldn’t attach
the tags, she strained over valises
strange, it was a check-in as
arranged, but this was a different kind of
Tag as day;
debriefed.
A ticket a thicket
she said she was flying
a tisket a tasket
no way could you ask it
she couldn’t move
back, couldn’t put her name
tags to the valises
of “days”—
task for task—
from tags what’s to know?
The youngest child said
ma nishtena
how was it different
from other airports
bags heavier
ore intractable
airport call letters
and transfer interline code
crossed over, snarled, tracking strips sticking
tag to bag and bag to tag,
then a very isolated runway
and the roaring thrust countdown seconds
before take-off.
10. rranged
ne of anguage
nger, mean
glot
gns, sighs
o stop
consider step,
orm of me.
f
r
avine
11. There was
a phone call one day after
asking
for the newly-stark
by name
someone
identifying herself by the exact same
“I want to talk
to her” the phone said
of the dead woman
because she had
to track
bureaucratic
between—crossed medical
records, mixed-up
reports, wrong
information relayed
confusion
to doctors, some tedious-impt thread,
because they had the exact same name, so
“Can I talk to her?
I have questions”
the voice said.
12. Only later (one of those
wake-up calls called retrospect)
did the receiver ask
who was making that call
anyway?
After all, she had always wanted
to be organized,
she had wanted, a point of pride,
not to leave
things in a mess—
she had labelled everything with messages,
she had set folders stacked,
she had tacked observations
‘old camera—possibly valuable
but lets in too much light’—
onto a lot of wrack:
why had I—in my disbelief—
hung up so abruptly?
The call came in under the radar,
uncanny.
But then I realized what had happened
and wanted—but had gotten no number—
to return the call,
to call her back.
13. Go on a long enough trip
down the time line
tickets used
itineraries shot
and you’re left with these sheafs—
ghost travel folders, empty.
Now what?
Now exactly what?
April 1999-July 2000
for Frances Jaffer and others
whose “absence is/ Absence”
Notes to Draft 43: Gap. “Answer the dawn will you” is from Frances Jaffer, “Sixty Frances,” Alternate Endings (1985). “A woman’s voice is nakedness” (not, in context, a positive remark) from Talmud, forbidding kol isha, women’s voices singing liturgy in Orthodox Judaism. “Say to myself Frances...” is Jaffer, “Yale Bowl” from She talks to herself in the language of an educated woman (1981); “rough brown stones,” from Jaffer, “She says try...” Alternate Endings (1985). ”An oversimplification of the situation....” from John Cage, “45’00”; “eye” from Richard Wilkinson, Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture; “ear” from Kim Vaeth on Jaffer in H.D. and Poets After, ed. Donna Hollenberg. “Absence” in the dedication, from Jaffer, “Dictation,” Alternate Endings (1985). Donor drafts are the two “Gaps”—Draft 5 and Draft 24.
Enter
a gold and sooty city
purple powder
on unopened pine nuts
in which flaneuses
obliquely
cross a piazza
on market day
spurt and overlap
dawnsong to dawnsong
red clay,
green glaze slapdash
subject and answer.
Similars that materialize
one maybe a little behind
the other
entangled,
thick inkings over silver lunges
communicating at an unknown speed.
One in best bright blue, a turquoise fold
One spotted or checked with best blood-thick
maroon
the two,
the we or us, in flare, the rushing
vocalized crimson and
azure
narrow and
swifter array
cardinal, coral, cobalt,
cerulean, we say,
fiori di
zucca of gold
trace elements.
We’d made a minyan, a mutual minyan;
as if to reassess mignonne,
to see “si la rose…”
had finished with us yet:
Dot and petal, dot det det
messages to Erato
transmuted to
fiori di loto
elaborated
as carmen and libations,
inc. apple
pear, peach,
grape and melon.
Words in divination
fine sticks, to throw
the writing twig
so fast and yon
to place with thorns and twisted
backwards E’s
the intricacy of is, that goes
far further than “the rose”
but grips the rose as tight as
it grasps anything.
And hence the propositions of the smallest mark or chuck
dilate vision. The pupil grows as large as the eye.
The ear opens tunnels
behind itself.
Thought is frightened
for it can’t think anywhere near the size of what has happened
to bring is forth and set it rolling out:
besides, we’re called to run a time behind, upon,
within, inside
plus of that scroll.
tangled in the long veil of the page
for the glinting world, for cumulus congestus
the sky,
Which fear is a gift,
a kind of dowry
settled on us.
Thick ribbons waterfalling from a 3rd storey window
in prepositions and loose gathers
that breeze down
so we can catch the colors, maypole manifold
draped and blowing in waves
countersinging.
Crimson and azure, these the conditions
Straw yellow with greenish reflections
crimson and azure made our refraction
polvere color di malva or prugna on sand-colored
pinoli
a hammer opens them barely
besides have no grammar
pinoli sabbie
(or color
di sabbia?)
thick on the ground in the nested masts of pine-needles
the enormous periphrastic effort of making foreign small
talk.
Nasal klezmer taps that
Second Avenue Fraylachs
sound that could be bagpipes
modal shim with Semitic halftone
melos from a golden miele sugar gritty
all smallish stakes within the endless
while blue demons hammer
the dead down at the corners
with unnecessary nails.
Odd piece of luck, the universe and stars
a home we hardly know one wire or premise of
one projection of colored gases by number
one answer to what
or how
still
allows us
to name its flowers feathers and flares
its urns collecting bones and ash
with the frank heads of folks we know by sight
corking dwarfish canopic bottles.
Fugue, quick jumps, and resonance
warbling jumble of the flight song
refined, flowery and
complex
scents of
broom, stretto entrances
full, velvety and well-balanced
its typical
aftertaste a bitter almond
its songleaf
bright and burnished orange.
The
clarities and folds of bright cloths
come spotted
with calligraphies
All smallish stakes within
the endless
pinecone tombs in pineta
polvere purple on pinoli
cannot open them
hard as rocks
but the dead
are
crushed and buzzing
and these old tombs have doors.
Endlessness is connoted two ways
the variations on sangue di bue
and ochre so pink and
blue-red
blood sweetened with sex sugars.
Skirt full on a plinth of light the men are rust the women
white
acrid gendered colors with their pristine flair
. Open the
lock:.
Does all this
give
both setting sun and rising moon allure?
double flute
plangent matching of
half tones
next a grand medley of
warbles and intensities.
bubbling trills and other notes
Does all this give
the puddled days intent,
clear
narrowed
places made with color words
Yes, blue leopard, there is absolute stalking.
Fleeting conjugations hardly mastered
how they enter fast, faster, fascinate
the return, in fugue, flight and resonance
enter the narrow access
duck the
dark, door beyond a door
for the silence is cold and saturated.
It is a
straight maze space, made up of symbolical stone
dankness
of passageways ending in
tight fits of plexiglass
panels for a paradox of light
on which one lies, could climb,
fall, or struggle
thru one’s own reflection
into their tombs.
It is a
luminescent dark
irradiated intermittently
by spritzes of fire
sometimes
orange ochre, sometimes rose
where arc-handed
dancers twist their wrists back
and, firm on one leg, twirl the other.
Here are the celebrants, here are the dead people
endlessness connoted two ways coral-cardinal
or cobalt black-blue dark and tepid-sweet
like more, vines with terrible
thorns.
They made these smallish stakes within
the endless
a bent kind of journey
a stuttering ramble of high pitched
notes
the sense of loss folds on themselves in gathers
that does not resemble a normal song
but is brighter louder
and more intense
ruby-red with garnet reflections
scents of cherries, wild berries, violets and
light spicy notes.
To enter that dark light
like foreground and background
held
pressures of a foreign
light in one plane and one intensity
to carry the shimmering
deep as the
dream
holding it not to spill its
oenomel, the honey wine
in any world,
above, below
or on the
line of dirt that separates the two
but duetting
between dark and the part we must call light
to play by the rules
of kottabos
wet and rosy, staining
the place
what’s direction?
living or dead?
make it dripping
balance the krater up
on the forearm
joy jest it forward jet
arcs toward the target
splashes coral, garnet, cobalt
blood-twisted straw-twirléd
flings
through the closed and
unnecessary air.
See how far
beyond the rose
to arc the wine
toward the intricacy of is.
When they are dead
when we are dead
split in the road—it’s
a pile of dirt, and the mirror realm.
Allure? here’s allure
this deep, as the dream
under earth, throwing,
dancing, balancing—
all the games of poesis
with the
same tenacity of under and above
from the
same clarity whether foreground or background
for the same
jesting world but underneath everything.
August 1999-August 2000
to Kathleen Fraser
Notes to Draft 44: Stretto. Many images from responding to the paintings in the Etruscan tombs of Tarquinia which I first saw in August 1999; the poem was also thereby making a deliberate connection to Kathleen Fraser’s “Etruscan Pages.” I wanted to register the impact of the fiore di loto ceilings, and especially of the Tomba dei Giocolieri (the dancer balancing a giant candlestick and the red-dotted dancer), Tomba Cardarelli (with the game called “kottabos,” played by men, of throwing wine against the wall), Tomba delle Leonesse (male and female dancers, lactating lionesses), Tomba de Caronti (blue hammer-carrying Charun), Tomba dei Leopardi (with the banquet, the white and red-bronze bodies of women and men, and the double-flute player), and Tomba del Triclinio (with the male dancer in blue). “Mignonne, allons voire si la rose” is the beginning of a carpe diem poem by Ronsard. Wine language from Fattoria il Palagio (Castel San Gimignano), regarding a Vernaccia di San Gimignano and a Chianti. Skirts on plinths and the waterfalling ribbon as described by artist Sarah Bradpiece. Descriptions of birdsongs by Lang Elliott, Music of the Birds: A Celebration of Birdsong. The “sense of loss folds on themselves in gathers” is modified from Peter Sacks on the elegy. Lurking always—D.H. Lawrence, Etruscan Places. Donor drafts are Draft 6: Midrush and Draft 25: Segno.
Bio: Rachel Blau DuPlessis is Professor of English at Temple University. In 2001 she published two books, Drafts 1-38, Toll from University Press of New England, and Genders, Races and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry from Cambridge University Press. She is the author of H.D.: The Career of That Struggle (Indiana University Press, 1986) and co-edited Signets: Reading H.D. (University of Wisconsin Press, 1990) with Susan Stanford Friedman. Her other books include Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers (Indiana University Press, 1985), and The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice (1990).
NOTE: See also the roundtable discussion on Rachel Blau du Plessis’s
DRAFTS 1-38, Toll featured in Issue 8 of HOW2 magazine at:
http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/however/v1_8_2002/current/forum/index2.htm