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Since 1986, Rachel Blau DuPlessis has been writing a long poem in canto-like sections, grouped in nineteen units. The individual poems fold over each other, using repeated elements to construct a sense of memory and traces or reminders of prior statements. Their themes involve history, gender, mourning and hope, all in "socio-twisty" language. Among their themes are awe, astonishment, skepticism, mourning, pleasure.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Grid of Drafts 1-38, Toll and Drafts 39-57: Pledge
- Draft 39: Split
- Draft 40: One Lyric
- Draft 41: Of This
- Draft 42: Epistle, Studios
- Draft 43: Gap
- Draft 44: Stretto
- Draft 45: Fire
- Draft 46: Edge
- Draft 47: Printed Matter
- Draft 48: Being Astonished
- Draft 49: Turns, an Interpretation
- Draft L: Scholia and Restlessness
- Draft 51: Clay Songs
- Draft 52: Midrash
- Draft 53: Eclogue
- Draft 54: Tilde
- Draft 55: Quiptych
- Draft 56: Bildungsgedicht with Apple
- Draft 57: Workplace: Nekuia
- Draft, unnumbered: Précis
- Notes
About the author
Rachel Blau DuPlessis is an American poet-critic, whose on-going long poem project, begun in 1986, is collected here in Torques: Drafts 58-76, as well as in Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan U.P., 2001) and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnnumbered: Precis (Salt Publishing, 2004). DuPlessis was awarded a residency at Bellagio in 2007; she was the recipient of a Pew Fellowship for Artists and of the Roy Harvey Pearce/ Archive for New Poetry Prize, both in 2002.
