Philadelphia Inquirer // Drafts by Rachel Blau DuPlessis

It's truly poetry in motion
Writer's unique "drafts" require a reader's action.

Reviewed by Andrew Ervin


Drafts 1-38, Toll
By Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Wesleyan. 278 pp. $17.95 (paper), $35 (cloth).

Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft, Unnumbered: Précis
By Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Salt Publishing. 235 pp. $18.99 (paper)

Rachel Blau DuPlessis calls her poems "drafts," no doubt playing on that word's many definitions. The poems have appeared in some of our most celebrated literary magazines and in the small, vital journals - such as the Poker and Philadelphia's own ixnay - where the sleeves-rolled-up, boiler-room work of the contemporary poetry scene takes place. From what I can tell, DuPlessis doesn't write poems so much as build them. The manner in which she does that is what makes the Temple professor one of the most exciting and inventive writers of our time.

The volume with the unwieldy title Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft, Unnumbered: Précis is the second of her collected works. The first, Drafts 1-38, Toll appeared in 2001, and I would highly recommend that those new to DuPlessis start there, given that the drafts are connected by a unique matrix of poetic imagery and meaning.

DuPlessis assembles each distinct draft the way a bird makes a nest - laboriously integrating numerous found objects over a long period of time. They contain all sorts of foreign material, including snippets of other peoples' poems and headlines from this very newspaper. (Who knows? Maybe a line from the review you're reading now will end up in a future draft.) The radical poet George Oppen is a frequently cited influence, and DuPlessis shows respect for his sparse style while also updating objectivist poetry for the age of late capitalism by accumulating and consuming - artistically speaking - so much cultural detritus.

As in much of Daisy Fried's work, there's often a distinctly Philadelphian quality. The imagery catches the eye, as in "Draft 41: Of This," before we're promptly ushered toward another thought:

Self-portrait on the C bus

social portrait with one dilated pupil

up Broad and down Broad

I see new immigrants

and old prisoners

get off

at the Assistance

Broad and some sign-gone cross street

Near North Philly Station

I don't know.

DuPlessis uses connectivity - here, the network of cross streets - as both form and theme, and the word conjunction appears with some frequency: These ultimately are poems about one's relationship to the people and things around one.

A kind of feminist discourse runs through these poems, which at every turn make linear reading impossible and call into question the very notion of hierarchy. They are as much felt as read, demanding not only the reader's attention but also his or her active, physical participation. The words move vertically and horizontally on the page, but also extend beyond those two dimensions. You will find yourself flipping back and forth between these two volumes, between individual poems, and between their extensive, corresponding notes in the back of the book.

That connectivity and interplay among the drafts is what makes DuPlessis' work so fascinating. Each poem directly ties in with one or two previous "donor drafts." There's even a chart showing that "Draft 47: Printed Matter," for instance, is a kissing cousin of "Draft 9: Page" and "Draft 28: Facing Pages" (both of which are found in the earlier collection). Then there's the note for "Draft 47: Printed Matter", which explains - among other things - that "the material about poisoned concrete, dumped illegally, then mistaken for fertilizer comes from the Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1999." You may feel that at times that the poems are reading you, not you the poems. Enjoy it.

Given the beauty and complexity of these drafts, it's not much of an exaggeration to say that DuPlessis has invented a new way of integrating poetic form and content. Hers is a massive, cathedral-size project unlike any other in contemporary literature. Readers get to choose between standing back to stare in awe of the complex formal structure or to step inside and spend hours eyeing the fine detail of each poem up close.

Washington Post Book World // Novellas

Novellas: Squalor and Love

Despite all the yap these days about the supposed death of the short story, few seem to care about its gangly, awkward -- yet strangely beautiful -- big brother, the novella. What would our literary heritage look like without "The Pearl" or "The Picture of Dorian Gray"? Yet the novella appears to be nearing extinction, a victim of marketing forces unable to decide where to shelve them at your local bookstore. But that's not the only reason to appreciate Owen King's debut, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories (Bloomsbury, $23.95).

Reading each of these diverse stories provokes a cringe reflex. There's tremendous violence here, occasionally served with a side of humor, such as when the teenage narrator of the title tale decides to exact revenge on his mother's new lover. "The notion that there was anything cruel about teaching my prospective stepfather's dogs to fetch their own feces," he tells us, "or that there was something more than a little demented about the trouble that I had gone to ... did occur to me at a few odd moments."

Some of these stories are gruesome, but they are always original. In "Wonders," set during the earliest days of baseball's integration, we derive some sick satisfaction from seeing a racist heckler beaten mercilessly by the local nine. And the best of the bunch, "Frozen Animals," is about a troubled dentist summoned to a remote cabin during a blizzard and possibly -- it's not all that clear amid his abuse of booze and narcotics -- gang-raped by nasty backwoods trappers.

King possesses a rare understanding of the macabre side of our workaday lives. He may one day take over the family franchise from his father, Stephen King, but We're All in This Together has enough moments of crystalline insight into human folly to prove he's finding a voice and an artistic sensibility all his own.

The Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto is also doing her part to keep the novella tradition alive. Her exciting, diminutive new book, Hardboiled & Hard Luck (Grove, $21, translated by Michael Emmerich), features two of them bound together. Each digs deeper than the typical short story, yet neither requires a novel's time commitment.

"Hardboiled" is actually a love story, albeit a spooky one set on "the sort of day when people in the old days talked about seeing sneaky creatures like mujina. Somehow the air feels heavy, and the night is darker than usual." While hiking alone through the mountains, a young woman comes upon a strange little shrine and begins to feel acutely uneasy. Tired and hungry, she gets to her hotel and settles into the bath before realizing that it's the one-year anniversary of her lover's death in a fire. The arrival of a mysterious guest and several dreams make the night all the more unsettling.

"Hard Luck" also features a young woman forced to deal with the death of a loved one. In this case, it's a comatose sister, Kuni, who "suffered a cerebral hemorrhage ... after she stayed up several nights in a row preparing a manual for the person who was going to take over her job when she quit to get married." During her regular hospital visits, our narrator strikes up an unlikely friendship with Sakai, the eccentric brother of Kuni's one-time fiancé. Together, they attempt to make some sense of the tragedy uniting them. Despite the somber nature of the subject matter, these are not depressing stories; Yoshimoto manages to find hope amid her characters' sadness. Taken together, these two novellas form a sparkling book.

Reviewed by Andrew Ervin, a writer and critic in Champaign, Ill.