Silliman's Blog: 10/16/11

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Today in Chicago

Toni Asante Lightfoot & Ron Silliman

Myopic Books

7:00 PM

1564 N. Milwaukee
(Wicker Park,
near the Damen Blue Line CTA stop)
773.862.4882

Labels: Events

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Friday, October 21, 2011

A visionary practice of cultural critique:
Interviewing Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Photo by Melody Holmes

My thanks to CA Conrad to reprint this from the PhillySound blog where it originally appeared.

Over the years Rachel Blau DuPlessis has written and said things which have struck flint in me, so I was of course happy when she agreed to take time out of her busy schedule for this conversation. There are few people alive today (there's no doubt in my mind that this is more than safe to say) who know as much about poetry as she does, and I don't just mean as someone who catalogs information, but someone who has a true sense of historic, political, social and economic aspects of where poetry emerges in these various contexts of our world. She overwhelms with what she knows, and inspires us TO GET KNOWING MORE and to sharpen our skills. In particular her role as an activist for women's rights and how this rubbed against her poems from the different sides of her earlier years is what I mostly ask her to talk about here, as you will see. Rereading the text today in preparation for publication, it's clear to me that she is talking about many things which have been ignored, BUT ARE VITAL TO our better understanding with a wider lens those various political and literary movements we think we have already figured out for ourselves. This is my way of saying this is important! And I'm happy to say too that it's a very enjoyable read!

CAConrad
Spring Equinox, 2008
Philadelphia

CACONRAD:
Rachel, you've said that when you were starting out in poetry that you were, "Too feminist for the Objectivists, and too Objectivist for the feminists." I've heard similar things from other experimental women poets of your generation, like Alexandra Grilikhes for instance. When I first met Alexandra she was always complaining that she had to chop out her own patch in the feminist and gay and lesbian literary worlds. She also said that in many ways it was her defiance to write what she knew she wanted to and had to write that defined her, as much as it also strengthened her writing, this time of struggle.

Labels: Interviews, Rachel Blau DuPlessis