Blue Studios Rachel Blau Duplessis Poetry and its Cultural Work Blue Studios You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY POETICS Series Editors Charles Bernstein Hank Lazer Series Advisory Board Maria Damon Rachel Blau DuPlessis Alan Golding Susan Howe Nathaniel Mackey Jerome McGann Harryette Mullen Aldon Nielsen Marjorie Perloff Joan Retallack Ron Silliman Jerry Ward You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Blue Studios Poetry and Its Cultural Work RACHEL BLAU DUPLESSIS THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS Tuscaloosa You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Copyright © 2006 The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Typeface: Minion ∞ The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Mate- rials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Blue studios : poetry and its cultural work / Rachel Blau DuPlessis. p. cm. — (Modern and contemporary poetics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-1508-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8173-1508-X (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-5321-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8173-5321-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. American poetry—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Feminism and literature—United States—History—20th century. 3. Poetry—Authorship—Sex differences— History—20th century. 4. Women and literature—United States—History—20th century. 5. American poetry—Women authors—History and criticism. 6. Feminist poetry, American—History and criticism. 7. Sex role in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PS310.F45D87 2006 811′5093522—dc22 2005027020 You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Poetry is related to music and cadence and therefore to the force of events —George Oppen The handle of it was blue. —Lorine Niedecker You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 I. Attitudes and Practices 1. Reader, I married me: Becoming a Feminist Critic 15 2. f-words: An Essay on the Essay 34 3. Blue Studio: Gender Arcades 48 II. Marble Paper 4. Manifests 73 5. Marble Paper: Toward a Feminist “History of Poetry” 96 6. Propounding Modernist Maleness: How Pound Managed a Muse 122 III. Urrealism 7. Lorine Niedecker, the Anonymous: Gender, Class, Genre, and Resistances 139 8. The Gendered Marvelous: Barbara Guest, Surrealism, and Feminist Reception 162 9. “Uncannily in the open”: In Light of Oppen 186 IV. Migrated Into 10. On Drafts: A Memorandum of Understanding 209 You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. viii / Contents 11. Haibun: “Draw your Draft” 218 12. Inside the Middle of a Long Poem 236 Notes 253 References 279 Index 299 You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Acknowledgments My deepest thanks go to Hank Lazer and Juliana Spahr—for the two prob- ing nonanonymous readers’ reports that helped me focus, cut, and mull this book as I was rewriting, remixing, and reconceptualizing it—and to Charles Bernstein for support. Dan Waterman, the Alabama editor, was terri¤c, both professional and adept. Joe Abbott was a stellar copy editor; Conna Clark, Philadelphia Museum, guided the choice of cover. My deepest institutional thanks go simultaneously to Temple University, for sabbaticals in both 2001–2 and 2004–5, and to the Pew Fellowship for Artists, for my 2002 grant (taken in 2004–5), which allowed me to complete this work, as well as to write poetry. Most of these essays have been signi¤cantly revised for this volume. Many thanks to the following editors and publishers: “Reader, I married me: A Polygynous Memoir.” In Changing Subjects: The Making of Feminist Literary Criticism, ed. Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn. New York: Routledge, 1993. Additional material from “Circumscriptions: Assimilating T. S. Eliot’s Sweeneys.” In People of the Book: Thirty Scholars Re®ect on Their Jewish Identity, ed. Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky and Shelley Fisher Fishkin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. “Lorine Niedecker, the Anonymous: Gender, Class, Genre, and Resis- tances.” Kenyon Review 14, no. 2 (spring 1992), ed. Marilyn Hacker; repr. in Lorine Niedecker: Woman and Poet, ed. Jenny Penberthy. Orono, ME: Na- tional Poetry Foundation, 1996. Unpublished Lorine Niedecker material is cited with the generous permission of the late Cid Corman, her then literary executor; an unpublished LN letter by the kind permission of The Archive for New Poetry, Mandeville Department of Special Collections, University You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. x / Acknowledgments of California, San Diego; a letter by Carl Rakosi, courtesy of the late Carl Rakosi and The Archive for New Poetry. “On Drafts: A Memorandum of Understanding.” TO: 1, no. 1 (July 1992), ed. Andrew Mossin and Seth Fretchie; repr. in Onward: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, ed. Peter Baker. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1996. “The Gendered Marvelous: Barbara Guest, Surrealism, and Feminist Re- ception.” In The Scene of My Selves: New Work on New York School Poets, ed. Terence Diggory and Stephen Paul Miller. Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 2001. “f-words: An Essay on the Essay.” American Literature 68, no. 1 (March 1996), ed. Sharon O’Brien. Special issue on contemporary writing in the United States. “Manifests.” In “Poetry, Community, Movement,” ed. Jonathan Monroe, special issue, Diacritics 26, no. 3 (fall-winter 1996). “Haibun: Draw your / Draft.” Sulfur 42 (April 1998), ed. Clayton Eshle- man; repr. in H.D. and Poets After, ed. Donna Krolik Hollenberg. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000. “Marble Paper: Toward a Feminist History of Poetry.” Modern Language Quarterly 65, no. 1 (March 2004). Three people have given this essay inter- ested support: Marshall Brown, Jeanne Heuving, and Jonathan Culler. “Blue Studio: Gender Arcades.” Open Letter (Canada), 11th ser., no. 4 (spring 2002), ed. Louis Cabri and Nicole Markotic. With many thanks to Barbara Cole as interlocutor. “‘Uncannily in the open’: In Light of Oppen.” Delivered October 2003 at the University of California, San Diego, for the Roy Harvey Pearce Archive for New Poetry Prize lecture. Excerpts delivered at the Modernist Studies Association, October 2003. An excerpt appears in Poetry Project Newsletter 201 (December/January 2004–5). The essay includes material from “The Topos of the ‘Thing’: Some Thoughts on ‘Objectivist’ Poetics.” In The Idea and the Thing in Modernist American Poetry, ed. Cristina Giorcelli. Palermo: Renzo e Rean Mazzone Editori, 2001. “Propounding Modernist Maleness: How Pound Managed a Muse.” Modernism/Modernity 9, no. 3 (2002). With thanks to Cassandra Laity, editor. Some material in the introduction from “Statement for PORES.” PORES 2 (October 2003). Online journal [email protected]/2/index.htm (ac- cessed June 17, 2005). “Inside the Middle of a Long Poem,” delivered at the Craft, Critique, Cul- ture conference, University of Iowa, March 29, 2003. You are reading copyrighted material published by the University of Alabama Press. Any posting, copying, or distributing of this work beyond fair use as defined under U.S. Copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. For permission to reuse this work, contact the University of Alabama Press. Introduction Blue means freshened, old-fashioned blueing in wash water; blue sky round- ing from the horizon; blue evokes an ideal, like the famous Azure of sym- bolist poetics; blue is intense, the color of batik. Sometimes blue means moody, depressed, forsaken.