The Uncontainable

This past summer, I talked to Rachel Blau DuPlessis at the Kelly Writers House about her long-term engagement with Williams' Paterson particularly, and long-form poetic works in general. Her "life-poem" Drafts, described by Ron Silliman as "one of the major poetic achievements of our time," continues an engagement with and challenge to Williams' aesthetics; numbering close to 100, DuPlessis' Drafts are more open, polysemic, multiple, and provisional than perhaps Williams' could have let himself perform, but which, it seems, he dreamed in his own imperfect way. DuPlessis has also written critically about Williams in her book The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice, which, like her poems, challenges generic considerations, and expands what the critical essay can be. (And by the way, listening to audio of her performances, available on PennSound is a really great way to start navigating her work).
I feel like this audio interview will be one of the last I will be collecting before attempting a reconsolidation of the various materials. As you can probably tell, the content for this blog has been steadily petering, with some renewals here and there, but nonetheless on the fade. It has always been a question for me whether any consolidation is worthwhile or advisable, which is why interviews like those below have been kept in as close to their rawest form (with some mild editing) because I have felt it is better to make them available during the process, rather than to wait and wait for an ideal form that never comes. What would be the ideal? There are so many objects that this blog can be translated into (so then, why not keep as blog?) In fact, there is an application now where I can press a few buttons, enter a few passwords, and voilà! the blog is "slurped" into a book. (This application here may be easier, all you have to do is enter the url impossibleobject.blogspot.com and see what it would look like without having to download any software.) Obviously, that option only would be some kind of conceptual parody of blog specificity, although it may be worthwhile as a textual trace--evidence, like performance photos, and ultimately useful in case Blogger decides to suddenly cease operations or their data gets wiped out in an electromagnetic singularity. Nevertheless, there will be at the very least a few more postings, including an interview (text only) with Jennifer Scappetone, before Impossible Object makes a leap into another medium or into the void.
The following interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis took place on June 10, 2010 in Philadelphia.
I heard this was a really bad poem: (4 min. 23. sec)
Nobody cared about Williams (or the long poem): (2 min. 51. sec)
Marcia Nardi and the lost women of the 50s: (7 min. 11 sec.)
This is the thing that can never be contained: (6 min. 02 sec.)
Unicorn versus plethora: (4 min. 42 sec.)
Paterson's opening passage: (3 min. 50 sec.)
Eros and plethora: (4 min. 26 sec.)
The triadic line, eros, rape: (4 min. 28 sec.)
Staggering identification with beautiful thing: (2 min. 45 sec.)
Language poetry and Paterson: (2 min. 51 sec.)
Visiting Paterson: (1 min. 30 sec.)

The Ironic Midden

Recently, I was able to get my hands on the Charles Olson documentary Polis is This, and then to listen to a fairly recent PoemTalk, where they took on Olson's Maximus poems. The documentary made much of the largeness of Olson himself, and we were implicitly asked to imagine how it may have impacted his poetry. In the documentary's archival footage, we can see how he enjoys this largeness, especially when he gestures towards the "thisness" of not only the space of Gloucester, but also his presence in it.

While in PoemTalk Rachel Blau DuPlessis brings the group's attention to this gesturing that seems to self-reference, Charles Bernstein nuances DuPlessis' (and the documentary's) interpretation with a more anti-essentialist (or anti-lyrical) reading: "[Olson] is suggesting that the I in that is the resistance to the present, the possibility of what the future could be, and also the recognition of the past. . . . He's explicitly rejecting the idea that it's about him in just some biographical sense." Later, Bob Perelman will comment upon the "ironic midden" to which the deixis of this section of Maximus ("Plus this--plus this:") contributes, undoubtedly related to Williams' "of this, make it of this, this/ this, this, this, this ."
I will be talking about this "ironic midden" and the possibility of tracing it throughout history, from Shakespeare to Ron Silliman, this week at the Motto Temporary Storefront in Brooklyn. I will be introducing my new multimedia essay on literary minutiae for Triple Canopy--"The Quiddities," in addition to other related events.

The Mad Cartographer Falls to the Ground

Al Filreis gives a good parting shot about Paterson, at the end of this mappily-themed PoemTalk about Spicer's “Psychoanalysis: An Elegy.” With Julia Bloch, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and CA Conrad.