Ho|ma|ge
to Destament’s Brisure, image by Daniel Y. Harris
Excerpts from Eurydics
What did you expect? This entrance
on every scale into
sound and sedimentation
destroys the merely
consumable
substitutes struggle.
What did you want?
the vibration of an
untempered
instrument in a
keening or keen
touching mode
modality or modular
scale
sequencing notes in
the most untoward
true pitch
gradations--
one will never
“be the same,” for
this satisfied yearning, this unsatisfied yearning
this desire, the memory
of a dream without my knowing ever
what it was you dreamed was
dissonant song. And the working of work.
The stark and rocky trail is flanked
by letters apparently spelling the name of “wanderer”
but always unreadable, foreign, undeciphered,
left mysterious.
=
There was a woman ripped her early
works
stripped them into shreds and
shards
those flags of loss, she
wanting, saw them only as wanting,
from which in a rage of desire
readied by her perfected resistance
glued the strips
on masonite and canvas
and made what we now call her works
from all the ruptured fragments.
If it’s
not coherent, why is it important
that it’s
not coherent?
Let it be
exactly what it needs to sound it self.
Clustered
relations of affliction need succor.
Everything
demands transformation.
This is a
contested area of knowledge.
A
contested claim.
Seems odd
it would be so contested.
Suppose
cultural production is political
practice.
Why
suppose?
We know it
is.
=
And what about the poetic? There is
nothing worse than “the poetic.” So well meaning, so ennobling in its
intention, so sympathetic with what its users think of as art or artistic, the
merest trace of that term makes me blanch. What responsibility does poetry have
for this “the poetic”? Is my resistance to that which ennobles, gives sympathy,
brings a tear to the eye, gives aphoristic sentiments to live by so churlish
and reductive? Is this my problem
—Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Rachel Blau DuPlessis is the author of Drafts, (1986-2012), whose newer volumes are Pitch: Drafts 77-95 (Salt Publishing, 2010) and Surge: Drafts 96-114 (Salt Publishing,
2013). Post-Drafts, she has been
publishing shorter autonomous books: Interstices
(Subpress, 2014)--epistles to people, and Graphic
Novella (Xexoxial Editions, 2015)--collage, poetry and glosses. Two books and a chapbook will come out in
2016—Eurydics from Further Other Book
Works, Days and Works from Ahsahta
Press, and “Poesis” from Little Red Leaves. She has also written several books
of literary criticism and essays.sis is the author Drafts, (1986-2012), whose newer volumes are Pitch: Drafts 77-95 (Salt Publishing, 2010) and Surge: Drafts 96-114 (Salt Publishing,
2013). Post-Drafts, she has been
publishing shorter autonomous books: Interstices
(Subpress, 2014)--epistles to people, and Graphic
Novella (Xexoxial Editions, 2015)--collage, poetry and glosses. Two books and a chapbook will come out in
2016—Eurydics from Further Other Book
Works, Days and Works from Ahsahta
Press, and “Poesis” from Little Red Leaves. She has also written several books
of literary criticism and essays.
