Rachel Blau DuPlessis (born December 14, 1941) is an

American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q * George Quasha (born 1942) R S T U–V ...

and

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

, known as a feminist critic and scholar with a special interest in

modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

and contemporary poetry. Her work has been widely anthologized.

Early life

DuPlessis was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York in 1941 to Joseph L. and Eleanor Blau; her father was a professor, and her mother was a librarian. She received her BA from

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

in 1963, and her MA and PhD from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1964 and 1970 respectively. Her dissertation project was titled ''The Endless Poem: Paterson of William Carlos Williams and The Pisan Cantos of Ezra Pound''.for more info see: Paterson ;

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...

;

The Pisan Cantos ''The Cantos'' by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a ''canto''. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date ...

; &

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

Career

Teaching

DuPlessis taught literature and creative writing at

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, from 1974 to 2011; she has been professor emerita since 2011. In 2012, she was a Distinguished Visitor at

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

. DuPlessis has also taught at Trenton State College (now known as

The College of New Jersey The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is a public university in Ewing Township, New Jersey. It is part of New Jersey's public system of higher education. Established in 1855 as the New Jersey State Normal School, TCNJ was the first normal school, or ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

, Université de Lille III (France), and Rijksuniversiteit-Gent (Belgium). She also held an appointment with the National Humanities Center in North Carolina and a residency at Bellagio sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.

''Drafts'' Project

In conjunction with teaching and editing projects, DuPlessis has been writing her "poem of a life," called "Drafts." Among others, poet

Ron Silliman Ron Silliman (born August 5, 1946) is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wr ...

has referred to DuPlessis's poem ''Drafts'' as a "life poem":

More than any other text, ''Drafts'' has made me understand the difference between the longpoem and the life poem, and I read ''Drafts'', like ( Zukofsky's “A”), like
The Cantos ''The Cantos'' by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a ''canto''. Most of it was written between 1915 and 1962, although much of the early work was abandoned and the early cantos, as finally published, date ...
, like Bev Dahlen’s ''A Reading'', like my own project, as an instance of the latter.

Since 1985, Rachel Blau DuPlessis has been composing this "endless poem" in canto-like sections, grouped in nineteen units. Their themes involve:

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...

mourning Mourning is the expression of an experience that is the consequence of an event in life involving loss, causing grief, occurring as a result of someone's death, specifically someone who was loved although loss from death is not exclusively ...

and hope. The first two numbers of ''Drafts'' initially appeared in Leland Hickman’s journal, ''Temblor'', two years before being collected into a volume entitled ''Tabula Rosa'', published by Peter Ganick’s Potes & Poets Press. Since then, DuPlessis's "life poem" project is collected in (as of March 2017): ''Drafts 1-38, Toll'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and ''Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft, Unnumbered: Précis'' (Salt Publishing, 2004), ''Torques: Drafts 58-76'' (Salt Publishing, 2007), ''Pitch: Drafts 77-95'' (Salt Publishing, 2010), and ''Surge: Drafts 96-114'' (Salt Publishing, 2013).

Personal life

DuPlessis is married to Robert Saint-Cyr DuPlessis, the Isaac H. Clothier Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations at Swarthmore College, and has two children.

Awards and honors

DuPlessis has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including grants from th
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Temple University, the

Pennsylvania Council on the Arts The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA) is an agency serving the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Its mission is to strengthen the cultural, educational, and economic vitality of Pennsylvania's communities through the arts. This mission is paired wit ...

, and the Fund for Poetry. In 2002, she was awarded a Pew Fellowship in The Arts as well as the Roy Harvey Pearce/Archive for New Poetry Prize for lifetime contribution to American poetry and literary scholarship.

Works by DuPlessis

Poetry

* ''Wells,'' Montemora (New York, NY), 1980 * ''Gypsy/Moth,'' Coincidence Press (Oakland, CA), 1984 * ''Tabula Rosa,'' Potes and Poets Press (Elmwood, CT), 1987 * ''Draft X: Letters,'' Singing Horse Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1991 * ''Drafts 3-14,'' Potes and Poets Press (Elmwood, CT), 1991 * ''Essais: Quatre poèmes,'' Editions Créaphis (Bar-le-Duc, France), 1996 * ''Drafts 15-XXX, The Fold,'' Potes and Poets Press (Elmwood, CT), 1997 * ''Renga: Draft 32,'' Beautiful Swimmer Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1998 * ''Drafts 1-38, Toll,'' Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT), 2001 * ''Draft, Unnumbered: Précis,'' Nomados (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), 2003 * ''Drafts 39-57, Pledge with Draft, Unnumbered: Précis,'' Salt Publishing (Cambridge, England), 2004. * ''Torques, Drafts 58-76,'' Salt Publishing (Cambridge, England), 2007 * ''Pitch: Drafts 77-95'', Salt Publishing (Cambridge, England), 2010 * ''The Collage Poems of Drafts'', Salt Publishing (Cambridge, England), 2011 * ''Surge: Drafts 96-114'', Salt Publishing (Cambridge, England), 2013 * ''Interstices'', Subpress (Cambridge, MA), 2014 * ''Graphic Novella'', Xexoxial Editions (West Lima, WI), 2015 * Poesis, Little Red Leaves Textile Editions (Houston: TX), 2016 * ''Days and Works'', Ahsahta Press (Boise, ID), 2017

Other

* ''Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers'' (Indiana University Press, 1985) OCLC 230821945 * ''H.D: The Career of that Struggle'' (The Harvester Press, 1986) OCLC 868376073 * Editor, ''The Selected Letters of George Oppen'' (Duke University Press, 1990) OCLC 859655652 * Editor, with Susan Stanford Friedman, ''Signets: Reading H.D.'' (University of Wisconsin Press, 1990) OCLC 24724278 * ''The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice'' (Routledge, 1990) OCLC 715473801 * ''Genders, Races, and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry, 1908–1934'' (Cambridge University Press, 2001) OCL
958550498
* ''Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work'' (University of Alabama Press, 2006) OCL
425970102
* ''Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry'' (University of Iowa Press, 2012) OCL
754389718

References

Selected criticism

* Jaussen, Paul. "The Poetics of Midrash in Rachel Blau DuPlessis's Drafts."'' Contemporary Literature'', vol. 53, no. 1, 2012, pp. 114–142. doi:10.1353/cli.2012.0004 * Harrington, Joseph. "Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry by Rachel Blau DuPlessis (Review)."'' Modernism/modernity'', vol. 20, no. 2, 2013, pp. 397–399 doi:10.1353/mod.2013.0043

External links

Author Homepage at EPCAuthor Homepage
essay by DuPlessis on

Barbara Guest Barbara Guest, ''née'' Barbara Ann Pinson (September 6, 1920 – February 15, 2006), was an American poet and prose stylist. Guest first gained recognition as a member of the first generation New York School of poetry. Guest wrote more than ...

Standing Corporeally in One’s Time
essay by DuPlessis on

Anne Waldman Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activ ...

"Draft 42: Epistle, Studios"
poem by DuPlessis at

Jacket Magazine ''Jacket'' (now published as ''Jacket2'') is an online literary periodical, which was founded by the Australian poet John Tranter. The first issue was in October 1997. Until 2010, each new number of the magazine was posted at the Web site pi ...

Statement for ''Pores''
on-line essay by DuPlessis for ''Pores'', a journal which describes itself as AN AVANT-GARDIST JOURNAL OF POETICS RESEARCH
Excerpts from ''Graphic Novella''
in ''Cordite Poetry Review''

essay at

, with the subtitle: "The construction of masculinity in the counter-cultural poetry of the U.S. 1950s".
DuPlessis Feature at Poetica.net
On the Homepage can be found links to biographical information, a poem ''Tabula Rosa (Chapter II, Drafts)'' and a brief piece or "aphoristic-essay" titled ''Working Notes'' * Rachel Blau DuPlessis Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Duplessis, Rachel Blau 1941 births Living people Modernist women writers Objectivist poets Feminist artists Temple University faculty Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Writers from Brooklyn Pew Fellows in the Arts American women poets Barnard College alumni American women academics 21st-century American women