12 or 20 (second series) questions with Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Rachel Blau DuPlessis is a poet,scholar, critic, and collagist. Her work includes the notable long poem Drafts(1986-2012), related historical-serial books such as
Daykeeping
(2023),and collage poems. Her latest is
The Complete Drafts
(2025), published by Coffee House Press. As a poet-critic she has written extensively on gender,modern and contemporary poetry, and both feminist and objectivist poetics, withspecial attention to H.D., Mina Loy, Lorine Niedecker, Barbara Guest, andGeorge Oppen.1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How doesit feel different?
My first book--done in a purist mode, tending tominimalism, a realist and a feminist-mythic and lyric mode --was writtenout of and inside of a generally Objectivist poetics that was at that momentbecoming resurgent. The book was Wells(New York: Montemora, 1980). One of fourbooks published as a “Supplement” to the periodical Montemora, edited byEliot Weinberger, the journal was characterized as elegant, intent,sophisticated in its literaryness. The editor sought European, Latin American, and United Statescontributors. This “Supplement” enterprise published Gustaf Sobin, MaryOppen’s poetry, a first work by Mark Kirschen, and myself. As a first book, it helped me declare I was awriter of poetry, come what may.
My most recent poetry book, Drafts,in two volumes (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2025) joins the modern andcontemporary long poem with its ode-ic and serial works in 114/115 cantos. Thelong work was written between 1986 and 2012, and became an excessive andwide-ranging work of poetic scope, cultural and historical commentary within anethical aesthetics. It has been my central poetic project from the moment itshowed its potential and was variously published (in many periodicals, by SaltPublishing in England, and one set by Wesleyan another by Chax Press in theU.S, during the generally twenty-five years during which I wrote it, before Iclosed it in 2012. Book-lengthselections have been translated into French, Italian, and Russian; andindividual works into Spanish, Portuguese , and German, with a book-length workexpected in Spanish. Canto-length works from this long poem have beenanthologized, often in collections including the words innovative, experimental,or conceptual in the titles. The projectled me to having something like an Objectivist-Projectivist poetics, committedto working out the contradictions of those position. The Complete Draftsas an unusually compelling and varied work of summation, explores topicspersonal, historical, and ethical with a striking array of genres and tonalvarieties. This poetry tries to manifest my well known interest in agender-subtle attitude and a lucidityand commitment to social poetics.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornon-fiction?
As I child, I was readto a good deal from both poetry and fiction. As an adolescent, I picked up oneof Louis Untermeyer’s anthologies of modern poetry. Between A.A Milne andWallace Stevens, I was hooked.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Doesyour writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first draftsappear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?
Well, from 1986, I had aparticular writing project. Because individual Drafts are about smallchapbook size, I will use those to answer that spirit of your question. Initialwriting (of one work, one Draft) may come quickly, yet I am generally a slow writer, very committed torevision, but also to the heuristic process of “making,” following where the poem might lead me, whileat the same time that I am both responding to it, and pushing and pulling it.The individual drafts of Drafts took a while to get their finalshape—whether that shape was an emotional trajectory, a rhythm of understanding,a serial examination, or an arousal toawe. The sound of the works in Drafts varies, because I have multiplegoals: such as reacting to events, collecting soundings in the news, pursuing an investigation, creating an experience. Many works of Draftsare like poetic-essays; many write to a horizon infused with my homage to andresistance to various modernisms. In a certain way these works as a whole takepoetry is a mode of expressive research into cultures (and sometimes specificmoments of histories).
4 - Where does a poem or work ofprose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end upcombining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" fromthe very beginning?
I have done both. Once Ibegan my long poem in 1986 after I published my second book, called TabulaRosa (Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1987), shorter writing was incorporated into a given work of making one Draft.I did not habitually craft or work through the possible shape of a giveninsight into a shorter poem but let shorter materials fuse and connect intolonger forays. Once any single Draft started, materials often coagulatedor were written with that Draft in mind. I did use citations and currentrealities as part of what I found as material; I also have a commitment to theliterature of the past as I want to resee it.
After the whole longpoem was declared closed in 2012, subsequently I wrote several shorter books,some as collage work, but one project presented itself in several bookstogether beginning in work published in 2015. This set of short books emerged oneafter another as if in chapters about my particular experiences andobservations of the (now) twenty-first century, particularly uneasy ones in the changed, authoritarian United States. That six book group I now seeunder the rubric (title?) of Traces, with Days. This set of works are (in reverse chronological order)Daykeeping. Chicago: Selva Oscura, 2023; Poetic Realism. Buffalo:BlazeVOX, 2021; Late Work. NY: BlackSquare Editions, 2020; Around the Day in 80 Worlds. Buffalo: BlazeVOX, 2018; Daysand Works. Boise: Idaho: AhsahtaPress, 2017; and Graphic Novella.West Lima, Wisconsin: Xexoxial Editions, 2015. (the last one a college and text work.) I am currently completing this set of works, with a work conceived of asanother shorter book, called Blazes, in the mode of socio-aestheticsaturation in contemporary histories taking soundings in the sense of time that Ihave. .
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Areyou the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love giving readings,particularly of my longer poems, since they have a logic through the voice. Theauthor’s presence does not hold the poems together, but they can be dramatizedthrough my voice, with clear readings of the syntax as a certain’s poem’srhythmic disclosure.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kindsof questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even thinkthe current questions are?
One concern got articulated in the first essay in my second book of gender and poetics : BlueStudios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work.(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.) I think the work of modernity isincomplete for many people (because of intolerance, compromised literacy,badly-adjudicated justice, uneven distribution, despoiling economies) and thatliterary writing now has a responsibility to point out that incomplete modernity(given some of its promises and even premises). Hence I say that with my poetry, I’m trying to begin realmodernisms all over again. In the essay,I say I want to approach “power and hegemony” with (among others) the tools ofa “feminism of critique,” that is, with critical insights, empathy, claims ofequity, and resistance where necessary. With the critical vocabulary and itssources in multiple groups, I have felt that a “re-vision” and rectification ofour global disasters would necessitatethe multiple, forceful, and polyvocal invention of a new culture” –might we sayan inclusive, lively, and fairer one. At the same time, I do not for myselfdesire a hectoring or tendentious voice, although well-deployed polemic can havegreat virtues. The poetry I write does not pretend “answers,” it wants to seeand register the world we know and that we want to question. I am moreinterested in “it” (the world and its languages and situations) than I am in“I”myself alone as an single particular,expressing feelings and pasts without any context or sense of what historiesformed the self (and selves) of my poems.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?
Aside from my comments above, Iappreciate in many ways the implications of “a poetics of critique.” With thatanalytic-poetic acumen, I’d want sincerity, a poetry of observed accuracy,language-intelligence, and of necessity.. I also deeply admire Joan Retallack’s phrase and sense of purpose in“the poethical wager.” I also do not think poetry need be solemn, but ratherwitty and playful, filled with the joys and twists of languages and dictions, becauseit is serious.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficultor essential (or both)?
I have learned a good deal from good suggestions and a critical eye fromothers on my work.Those would be most often from reader’s reports througheditors of my prose. I have had almost no poetry editors, but I was lucky enough to have George Oppen’sintrasigent eye on my very early work.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily givento you directly)?
When I had postponedwriting too many times. I would say to others,”don’t postpone. If you need todo a work now, do it now!! Things do not keep indefinitely, and you can losetheir impetus.”
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry toessays)? What do you see as the appeal?
Nothing is”easy”; youare working in different zones of address. But I have definitely done both withpleasure. For ease of identification for others, I sometimes call my poems “poem-essays,” becauseof their tonal variety (heteroglossia), and topical change-ups (collage). Aperson might choose to write, or somehow be chosen by these genres. You putyour all into either, but a slightly different mix of that “all.” Because I havedone both, I’d also distinguish them from scholarly essays and books (which I havealso written with serious interest );this is both an intriguing question and a longer term query—more than I cancomment on here. First off, a work of scholarship for me is research-based atsome point, might involve pertinent close readings that are essential to achapter’s argument, and, without pretending you are the only decent critic inthe world , such a genre presents a serious and efficient argument, often butnot crucially to a community of professionals of which you are part. That setof commitments has degrees of difference from both essay and poetry.
Both essays and poetry differ from thissomewhat idealized model of scholarship in my field (poetry/literature). Inboth you have to be called in a different way to write either, often in both bya very compelled sense of listeners, a community into which you are talking,and to a self as writing voice that compells you to say just this. Riskis paramount. Compulsion and desire distinguish these modes. For scholarship,one has keen external standards that are mostly in play. For essays and poetry,there is a keen and irreducable sense of internal necessity that makes youstick to. with, and by a given work at a different level of loyalty to yourvision of it. The degree of sheer drivenness and the deep need to work on theshape and tonalities of poems and essays are certainly part of the appeal forme.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you evenhave one?
In my professional life,it was quite hard for me to compartmentalize. A writing routine has been what Icould manage in the time available.That seems to be true even after retirement.
How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I wish I had a typical scheme I could give you. Days differ drasticallythroughout one’s life.
I was a professor in auniversity. My teaching schedule changed semester to semester. I graded studentwork as part of my job. I saw students, often accounting for their schedules. Iprepared (or over-prepared) my classes (literature, creative writing women’sstudies, “Western humanities”) and had original syllabi to draw up sometimesseveral time a year. I had profession responsibilities inside and outside theuniversity (editorial, administrative).. Schematizing all this, plus beingmarried and a mother—and a person, and a poet—I kind of wonder how everythingdid happen. My only answer is I didn’twatch TV.
I will say one thing, I used to revise Drafts on my commute bytrain. The half hour or forty minutes meant I would whip out a current poem andread it and listen to it and revise it during that private time in a publicspace.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (forlack of a better word) inspiration?
Patience, doingsomething else, and giving the stalled work a week or a month off; and oftenreading something-- a poem in a different language than English, or a writeropposite from my mode, or a work reminding me of what I am trying .
13 - What fragrance reminds you ofhome?
Of my home? Of the home Igrew up in? Mine—spices I like to cook with; of my childhood home, maybe teaand buttered toast.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but arethere any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, scienceor visual art?
All on your list—arts and sciences—(science and math ideas through NY Times science pages andgeneral-audience books ) All , definitely, consistently, rigorouslyvalued and pursued during all my active years (in concerts, museum and gallery attendance, some friends in thosefields). I sometimes understand my experience making my long pom as creating a“sculptual” shaping. Big chunks of matter are made by me brought into, meldedinto one item to experience. I therefore value the different-from-literaryinsights of other forms and the shaping each accomplishes to reach their total,completed shapes. To answer thisquestion, I would also include much foreign travel (much more than most peopleI know) and even the chance toexperience living in places other than my actual citizenship for months at atime.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, orsimply your life outside of your work?
George Oppen, Robin Blaser, Virginia Woolf, and many contemporaries as serious companionswith true writing grit and sometimes with large-scale projects. Their names vary over lifetimes ofreading and teaching.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Have had piano lessonsor cello lesson early enough in my life so I could have played an instrumentdecently. Have the stamina to take a very big hike. You’ve cast the question as“what do you still want to do.” That’s not where I am temporally.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be?
Medical doctor.
Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?
Since I have had a negligible income from my poetry, essays, reviews,readings and appearances, reader’s reports for presses, etc. . ., I always hadto have an occupation in another profession. What i somehow choose was my adefinite interest, and that is “what I did” (I didn’t “end up” doing it—Iwanted to do it!) I picked a profession near to writer, incorporatingwriting (that is, being a literatureprofessor), but it was a more regularly structured profession than onlywriting. Hence I could count on its income and benefits along with otherinstitutional advantages, like good library access and some veryintriguing.students and colleagues.I don’t think I could have survived themarket as a high-end or free-lance journalist, or as an editor Plus, I thoughtthat women should choose (if possible)to have an income they called their own, one that a person could actually liveon, so tht marriage was a choice, not done for access to an income.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
That’s the mode mycreativity took, and that path was more clearly available and valued thanothers to people who had an influence on me; writing also appealed to my own curiosity. I might also answer with Robert Creeley’ssummary remark, “I’m driven to write poems.”
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last greatfilm?
Not sure I can formulatea response to this. I like lots of creative works for what they say, how they sayit, and what they give me.
20 - What are you currently working on?)
The book called Blazes that I mentioned already. And f I am lucky,a book of essays in poetics and poetry called Difficult Bliss. Which isexactly what this literary and scholarly career has been.
