Robin Blaser

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robin Francis Blaser (born 18 May 1925) is a noted author and poet in both the United States and Canada.

1 Personal Background
2 Published works
- 2.1 Poetry
- 2.2 Essays
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Personal Background

Born in Denver, Colorado, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, becoming a key figure in the so-called San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and early 1960s. He moved to Canada in 1966,joining the faculty of Simon Fraser University; he currently holds the position of Professor Emeritus. He lives in Kitsilano.

In June of 1995, for Blaser's 70th birthday, a conference was held in Vancouver, Canada to pay tribute to his contribution to Canadian poetry. The conference, known as the "Recovery of the Public World" (a phrase borrowed from Hannah Arendt), was attended by poets from around the world, including Canadian poets Michael Ondaatje, Steve McCaffery, Phyllis Webb, George Bowering, Fred Wah, and Daphne Marlatt; and poets who reside in the United States including Michael Palmer and Norma Cole (who was born in Canada, subsequently migrating to San Francisco).

Robin Blaser is also well known as the editor of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, which includes Blaser's essay "The Practice of Outside". The 1993 publication The Holy Forest represents his collected poems to that date. In 2006, Blaser received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize.

[edit] Published works

[edit] Poetry

The Moth Poem, 1964
Les Chimères: Translations of Nerval for Fran Herndon, 1969
Cups, 1968
Image Nations 1-12 & The Stadium of the Mirror, 1974
Image Nations 13 & 14, Luck Unluck Oneluck, Sky-stone, Suddenly, Gathering, 1975
Harp Trees, 1977
Image Nation 15: The Lacquerhouse, 1981
Syntax, 1983
The Faerie Queene and The Park, 1987
Pell Mel, 1988
The Holy Forest, 1993
Nomad, 1995
Wanders, with Meredith Quartermain, 2002

[edit] Essays

The Fire, 1974
The Metaphysics of Light, 1974
The Practice of Outside, 1975
The Violets: Charles Olson and Alfred North Whitehead, 1983
My Vocabulary Did This To Me, 1987
Poetry and Positivisms, 1989
The Elf of It, 1992
The Recovery of the Public World and Among Afterthoughts on This Occasion, 1993
Here Lies the Woodpecker Who Was Zeus, 1995
Thinking about Irreparables, a talk, 2000
The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser, 2006 ^[1]

[edit] Notes

^ edited by Miriam Nichols, (University California Press, 518 pgs). Includes "Poetry and Positivisms," "The Recovery of the Public World," " 'My Vocabulary Did This to Me,' " "The 'Elf' of It," "Bach's Belief," and many others.