THE DARKEST GUSH: EMILY DICKINSON AND THE TEXTUAL MARK
by Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Page 7
The work of this second part of Tabula Rosa was initiated in 1984-85, when I composed a 28-section serial poem called "Writing." In some sections, I put handwriting (my own) into the poem, something alarmingly taboo, for it brings the sloppy mark of the writer right into the book. This poem too has an indebtedness to Dickinson in its "fascicle" presentation of the hand of the poet there sullying or entering the technologically-contained printed text. And again, strongly in this poem, alternative or doubled marks enter the same page space, rupturing the unitary reading of a page. The various discourses were set in a page space like a stage with "things just happening on the side": it is as if there were no more center, just pulls in various directions. These two sections occur towards the beginning of the poem.
