Rachel Blau DuPlessis
from Interstices
Letter 5:
Dear O--
OMG. This is really odd.
Why should I be writing you?
Especially a Poetic Couplet
in such elegant Seal Script.
Message from the on-the-
other-hand path.
Observable overlap
and suspect connection.
How far away can you get,
yet still be enmeshed?
That constant position
of guarded lament you hold.
I am offering new
[sic] infirmation,
positing seducation
by another body.
You will never again
be quite the same.
Rubato is a provocative slowing,
a borrowing of time. Also, it's theft.
If I move the blue circle, or “you”
(O) there, it’s so clear it changes
my sense of what’s at stake.
Even zero is a position.
“I owe the inspiration for this work
to a misprint....”
But it was not an aimless error.
There was a future to be unleashed
of owe and own and owed--
a friendship--yes, odi et amo.
The long lost cannot be separated
from the long glossed.
It's true I knew
you once. And now no more.
Letter 8:
Dear Y--
I saw your letter
written in the sky.
Five blue-outlined, white-filled
narrow strikes of Y
as if lightning, nailed down
among the thickening clouds.
They presaged an immediate storm
that the folks in the dream
(who lived there and knew)
called "FURY."
A fierce rain then,
and then an inch-thick
stun of ice.
Can you see this
as I describe it? Is it
the feelings that are lacking?
Who can identify and state
the uneasy, twinkling
shifts of feeling
in a dream? And
in the aftermath
to haul “words”
through this portage?
Schlepping overland
(and in which land?)
distrusted, splintery words?
It is the aura
of the human
and it makes one rage
and weep surprised
until all dry of tears.
Alphabetic daze.
Words: always more than
half inadequate.
Cannot even fully tell
a graphic, well-formed dream.
How not to think culture,
signage, skill sets, capacities
for mythography are inadequate.
I mean by being always incomplete.
We cannot acknowledge,
articulate, or even see
intimations
of the real webs and
layers of complexity.
All will forever exceed
language.
Will exceed
our understanding,
therefore.
The stressed bees
in the lavender
the pollen of stars
are worlds so wide
and worlds so far
one sinks in rage
for words,
and awe.
This is a system-generated
message. Please do not bother
to reply. Replies to this message
are neither monitored
nor answered.
__________
Rachel Blau DuPlessis is the author of the long poem Drafts. Her newest book is Surge: Drafts 96-114, from Salt <saltpublishing.com> in 2013. The first "interstitial" work, Interstices appeared from SubPress Collective in 2014. Also in 2013, translations of Drafts into Italian and French were published: Dieci Bozze (trans. Morresi) from Vydia editore and Brouillons (trans. Auxeméry) from Corti. Other volumes include The Collage Poems of Drafts (2011), Pitch: Drafts 77-95 (2010), Torques: Drafts 58-76 (2007), and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnumbered: Précis (2004), all from Salt, as well as Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan U.P., 2001). Her recent critical book Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2012) is part of a trilogy of works about gender and poetics that includes The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice and Blue Studios: Poetry and its Cultural Work, both from University of Alabama Press.
from Interstices
Letter 5:
Dear O--
OMG. This is really odd.
Why should I be writing you?
Especially a Poetic Couplet
in such elegant Seal Script.
Message from the on-the-
other-hand path.
Observable overlap
and suspect connection.
How far away can you get,
yet still be enmeshed?
That constant position
of guarded lament you hold.
I am offering new
[sic] infirmation,
positing seducation
by another body.
You will never again
be quite the same.
Rubato is a provocative slowing,
a borrowing of time. Also, it's theft.
If I move the blue circle, or “you”
(O) there, it’s so clear it changes
my sense of what’s at stake.
Even zero is a position.
“I owe the inspiration for this work
to a misprint....”
But it was not an aimless error.
There was a future to be unleashed
of owe and own and owed--
a friendship--yes, odi et amo.
The long lost cannot be separated
from the long glossed.
It's true I knew
you once. And now no more.
Letter 8:
Dear Y--
I saw your letter
written in the sky.
Five blue-outlined, white-filled
narrow strikes of Y
as if lightning, nailed down
among the thickening clouds.
They presaged an immediate storm
that the folks in the dream
(who lived there and knew)
called "FURY."
A fierce rain then,
and then an inch-thick
stun of ice.
Can you see this
as I describe it? Is it
the feelings that are lacking?
Who can identify and state
the uneasy, twinkling
shifts of feeling
in a dream? And
in the aftermath
to haul “words”
through this portage?
Schlepping overland
(and in which land?)
distrusted, splintery words?
It is the aura
of the human
and it makes one rage
and weep surprised
until all dry of tears.
Alphabetic daze.
Words: always more than
half inadequate.
Cannot even fully tell
a graphic, well-formed dream.
How not to think culture,
signage, skill sets, capacities
for mythography are inadequate.
I mean by being always incomplete.
We cannot acknowledge,
articulate, or even see
intimations
of the real webs and
layers of complexity.
All will forever exceed
language.
Will exceed
our understanding,
therefore.
The stressed bees
in the lavender
the pollen of stars
are worlds so wide
and worlds so far
one sinks in rage
for words,
and awe.
This is a system-generated
message. Please do not bother
to reply. Replies to this message
are neither monitored
nor answered.
__________
Rachel Blau DuPlessis is the author of the long poem Drafts. Her newest book is Surge: Drafts 96-114, from Salt <saltpublishing.com> in 2013. The first "interstitial" work, Interstices appeared from SubPress Collective in 2014. Also in 2013, translations of Drafts into Italian and French were published: Dieci Bozze (trans. Morresi) from Vydia editore and Brouillons (trans. Auxeméry) from Corti. Other volumes include The Collage Poems of Drafts (2011), Pitch: Drafts 77-95 (2010), Torques: Drafts 58-76 (2007), and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnumbered: Précis (2004), all from Salt, as well as Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan U.P., 2001). Her recent critical book Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry (University of Iowa Press, 2012) is part of a trilogy of works about gender and poetics that includes The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice and Blue Studios: Poetry and its Cultural Work, both from University of Alabama Press.