“Something Worth Leaving in Shards: An Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis” in boundary 2

boundary 2, vol 50, no 2, cover image I am honored to say that my interview with the great poet and critic Rachel Blau DuPlessis, “Something Worth Leaving in Shards: An Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis,” has just been published in the most recent issue of boundary 2. (This link should provide access for three months.) I am deeply grateful to DuPlessis for corresponding with me during the summer of 2020. In lockdown with no childcare, corresponding with DuPlessis via email to conduct this interview (when I had a spare moment or two to do so) played a large part in keeping me sane during that difficult time. A huge thanks also to Racheal and Aviva, who were right there every day along with me while this interview was being conducted.

Here’s an abstract of the interview:

This interview with poet, essayist, literary critic, and collagist Rachel Blau DuPlessis was conducted via email correspondence between June 11 and August 29, 2020. Author of over a dozen volumes of poetry and half a dozen books in modernist studies, poetics, and feminist criticism, DuPlessis reflects broadly on her career in this interview. She discusses the ongoing role of feminism in her writing and thought, the forms of the fold and the fragment, the relationship between her poetry and criticism, her work in and on the long poem, and her post‐Drafts poetry, including her (at the time) most recent book, Late Work (2020). The interview concludes with a conversation about the relationship between poetry and theorizing practices and a meditation on writing during a global pandemic.

For my writing on DuPlessis: “‘Is an Archive Enough?’: Megatextual Debris in the Work of Rachel Blau DuPlessis.”

And for previous interviews: “Isn’t It a Beautiful Day? An Interview with J. Hillis Miller” and “An Interview with Jonathan Arac.”

Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 10: December 16, 2020–January 15, 2021

Think Pieces on . . . Everything

Timothy Snyder, “The American Abyss.”

Jelani Cobb, “Georgia, Trump’s Insurrectionists, and Lost Causes.”

Mike Davis, “Riot on the Hill” and “Hopes for 2021?”

Blair McClendon, “Lost Lost Causes.”

Adam Kotsko, “An Apocalypse about Nothing.”

Yoni Appelbaum, “How America Ends.”

Gabriel R, “Trump the Despot.”

Franklin Foer, “The Triumph of Kleptocracy.”

William Callison and Quinn Slobodian, “Coronapolitics from the Reichstag to the Capitol.”

Masha Gessen, “The Trial of Donald Trump Must Tell the Full Story of the Capitol Insurrection.”

Leah Donnella, “How The Storming of the Capitol Was — And Wasn’t — About Police.”

Eric Fretwell, “From Lynchings to the Capitol: Racism and the Violence of Revelry.”

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“2020.01,” “2020.02,” “2020.03,” “2020.04,” “2020.05,” and “2020.06” in Always Crashing

I didn’t get a lot of writing done this year, but some of the little I did is out today near its close. I am thrilled and honored to have the first of my pandemic sonnets—“2020.01,” “2020.02,” “2020.03,” “2020.04,” “2020.05,” and “2020.06”—in the online arm of Always Crashing. I also had important poems from the sonnet project, including the “long sonnet” “2016.36: Preface,” out in issue three of Always Crashing earlier this year. Thanks so much to the editors’ ongoing support of my work and this project.

Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 5: July 16–August 15, 2020

Black Lives Matter

Ishmael Reed, “America’s Criminal Justice System and Me.”

Anthony Bogues, “Black Lives Matter and the Moment of the Now.”

Colin Dayan, “Police Power and Can’t Breathe.”

Dwight Garner, “Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste Is an ‘Instant American Classic’ about Our Abiding Sin.”

Jane Hu, “The Second Act of Social-Media Activism.”

Jonathan Levinson and Conrad Wilson, “Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protesters off Portland Streets.”

Shane Harris, “DHS Compiled ‘Intelligence Reports’ on Journalists Who Published Leaked Documents.”

Ken Klippenstein, “The Border Patrol Was Responsible for an Arrest in Portland.”

Katie Shepherd and Mark Berman, “‘It Was Like Being Preyed upon’: Portland Protesters Say Federal Officers in Unmarked Vans Are Detaining Them.”

Charlie Warzel, “50 Nights of Unrest in Portland.”

Conrad Wilson, Dirk Vanderhart, and Suzanne Nuyen, “Oregon Sues Federal Agencies for Grabbing up Protesters off the Streets.”

Gillian Flaccus, “Judge Blocks US Agents from Arresting Observers in Portland.”

Richard Read, “Out of Portland Tear Gas, an Apparition Emerges, Capturing the Imagination of Protesters.”

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Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 4: June 16–July 15, 2020

Black Lives Matter

Gina Cherelus, “How We Juneteenth.”

Mariame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.”

R. H. Lossin, “In Defense of Destroying Property.”

 

Coronavirus

b2o Review, “COVID-19 Dossier.”

Hortense J. Spillers, “Apocalypse Now and Then.”

Charles Bernstein, “Herd Immunity.”

Nathan L. Grant, “Horseman No. 5.”

The A-Line Editorial Staff, “Convergence 5: Apocalypse Now and Then.”

Adrian Parr, “Pandemic Urbanism.”

Neil Vallelly, “The Coronavirus Decade: Post-capitalist Nightmare or Socialist Awakening?”

Umair Haque, “If Life Feels Bleak, It’s Because Our Civilization Is Beginning to Collapse.”

Hamilton Nolan, “There Is No Plan (For You).”

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“Blason I,” “Blason II,” and “Blason III” in The Second Chance Anthology

“Blason I,” “Blason II,” and “Blason III,” poems from my current ongoing project, Postrock, have been republished in The Second Chance Anthology, which will appear from Variant Literature on August 1, 2020. (Order it here; read it here.) The anthology features “work that has been pulled, withdrawn, [or] removed without notice from” a number of different publications. I’m especially thankful to Tyler Pufpaff and the editors of Variant Literature for finding a new home for the orphaned writing of so many great writers.

Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 2: April 15–May 15, 2020

Coronavirus Think Pieces

Kim Stanley Robinson, “The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations.”

Jodi Dean, “Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?”

Ibram X. Kendi, “We’re Still Living and Dying in the Slaveholders’ Republic.”

David Harvey, “We Need a Collective Response to the Collective Dilemma of Coronavirus.”

Richard Grusin, “Radical Mediation, COVID Masks, Revolutionary Collectivity.”

Charles Stross, “It’ll All Be Over by Christmas.”

Laurie Penny, “Productivity Is Not Working.”

Corey Robin, “Comrades.”

Masha Gessen on the present.

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