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Why I Chose Vanessa Place Is Not A Performance Poet

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Biography

Born on May 10th, 1968, Vanessa Place is a novelist, poet and lawyer. She is has multiple occupations. These occupations include, CEO of Vanessa Place Inc, co-director of Les Figues Press, contributor to Xtra Art Quarterly and The Iowa Review, as well as an occasional screenwriter. Place is also a pioneer of sorts. She was one of the first poets into conceptualism. Place wrote Notes on Conceptualisms, a book of notes that define and are examples of what conceptualism consists of.

Appeals of Vanessa Place

I chose Vanessa Place because I have hopes of going to law school and am struck with awe to see how structural yet creative Place can be. Place is not a performance poet. This conceptual poet is not what we would call a …show more content…

She did not remember telling the detective appellant said never take less than$50 for “head,” explained “head” meant oral sex, or that a customer should touch her breasts or she should fondle the customer’s penis to make sure the person was not a police officer. Or that if she was going to a hotel with a customer, she should first call appellant, or bring the money to appellant right after sex, or that if she did all this she would be rewarded with pretty clothes and appellant would take care of her. (RT 4:692- 695) (academia.edu)

Place’s argument that her files are poetry is that the poem meets what she believes to be the criteria of poetry. She says the poem has repetition or refrain, rhyme or assonance, and “there is a primacy of language as language” (academia.edu).

Vanessa Place and Feminism

Vanessa Place is also a feminist of sorts. As a fellow feminist myself, I felt a connection with the poet. Place wrote a paper titled Conceptualism is feminism. Within this paper, Place defines conceptualism, poetry, and feminism. Place states in the paper, “woman only exists contextually—one can only be woman relative to man. As everyone knows by now, the woman is what the man is not, as such, she is defined—and must be defined—by man… (academia.edu).” Place’s book, Boycott, is a book of poetry filled with iconic female texts which Place

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