Long Poems : : : Major Forms Conference--Rachel Blau DuPlessis, "'Merely More of a Good Thing?': Considering the Long Poem" (17 May 08)

The long poem as a passionate activity in its investment in a desire.

"The long poem is a work of mastery in which you submit to your own powerlessness."

Seriality--a rhythm of thought; accountability via accumulation

Length as a statement of ambition in relation to a poem. A way of waging/wagering inside time.

Derrida's "The Law of Genre"--all genres are contaminated, parasitic; all writing is always of multiple genres, which means any study of the long poem can only fail as it becomes undermined by the plethora.

"The lyric poem haunts the long poem even as the long poem" surrounds, smashes, trumps it.

"Fill" as one of the ethical horrors of the long poem

Short poem's sense of time immediately present vs. the long poem's "wallowing in time"

The lyric inside and outside the long poem. Zukofsky's A16 (only half a page), all other sections far longer. Sections before and after A16 are elegiac--words unequal to the work of elegy.