Robert Grenier (poet)

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For other uses, see Robert Grenier (disambiguation).


Robert Grenier (born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on August 4, 1941– ) is a contemporary American poet who is often associated with the Language School. A graduate of Harvard College and the University of Iowa Program in Creative Writing, he has taught literature and creative writing at UC Berkeley, Tufts, Franconia, New College of California and Mills College. His works include Sentences, Series, Oakland, A Day At The Beach, Phantom Anthems and OWL/ON/BOU/GH.

Grenier is currently co-editing a Collected Poems of Larry Eigner for the Stanford University Press. [1]. He was founding co-editor (with Barrett Watten) of the influential little magazine This (1971-1974) and was the editor of Robert Creeley's Selected Poems, published in 1976. Grenier's early work, influenced by Creeley, is noted for its minimalism. Grenier's recent work, however, is as much visual as verbal, involving multicolor "drawn" poems in special (and not always reproducible) formats.

Contents

[edit] Overview

The magazine This was a watershed moment in the history of recent American poetry, providing one of the first gatherings in print of various writers, artists, and poets now identified (or loosely referred to) as the Language poets.

In an essay from the first issue of This, Grenier declared: "I HATE SPEECH". Ron Silliman, commenting on Robert Grenier's gesture some years afterward, wrote:

Thus capitalized, these words in an essay entitled "On Speech," the second of five short critical pieces by Robert Grenier in the first issue of This, the magazine he cofounded with Barrett Watten in winter, 1971, announced a breach - and a new moment in American writing. [2]

Grenier’s recent "books" have been variously described as folios of haiku-like inscriptions or transcriptions. Examples of his current holograph poems can be seen on-line through the Grenier Author Page at the Electronic Poetry Center (see section below: "External links").

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Robert Grenier and Charles Bernstein: A Conversation
  2. ^ "Introduction: Language, Realism, Poetry" from In The American Tree edited by Ron Silliman, (Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 1986; reprint ed. with a new afterword, 2002).

[edit] Selected Publications

[edit] Books of Poems

  • Dusk Road Games (poems, 1960-66). Cambridge, MA: Pym-Randall Press, 1967.
  • Sentences Towards Birds (41 poems from Sentences). Kensington, CA: L Press, 1975.
  • Series (poems, 1967-71). San Francisco: This Press, 1978.
  • Sentences (500 poems on 5" x 8" index cards, boxed, 1972-77). Cambridge, MA Whale Cloth Press, 1978.
  • CAMBRIDGE M'ASS (265 poems on 40" x 48" poster). Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 1979.
  • Oakland. Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press, 1980.
  • A Day At The Beach. New York: Roof Books, 1985.
  • Phantom Anthems. Oakland, CA: O Books, 1986.
  • What I Believe. Elmwood, CT: Potes & Poets Press, 1988.
  • What I Believe transpiration/transpiring Minnesota (66 8.5" x 11" pages, unbound, boxed). Oakland, CA: O Books, 1991.
  • 12 from r h y m m s (12 4-color 8-1/2" x 11" drawing poems in envelope). Columbus, OH: Pavement Saw Press, 1996.
  • OWL/ON/BOU/GH (32 4-color 11" x 17" drawing poems in black portfolio). Sausalito, CA: Post-Apollo Press, 1997.

[edit] External links

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