The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser

by Blaser, Robin

• ISBN13: 9780520245112
• ISBN10: 0520245113
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-09-15
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

Spanning four decades of meditation on the avant-garde in poetry, art, and philosophy, the essays collected in "The Fire "reveal Robin Blaser's strikingly fresh perspective on "New American" poets, deconstructive philosophies, current events, and the state of humanities now. The essays, gathered in one volume for the first time, include commentaries on Jack Spicer, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Mary Butts, George Bowering, Louis Dudek, Christos Dikeakos, and J. S. Bach. Blaser emerged from the "Berkeley Renaissance" of the 1940s and 1950s having studied under legendary medieval scholar Ernst Kantorowicz and having been a major participant in the burgeoning literary scene. His response to the cultural and political events of his time has been to construct a poetic voice that offers a singular perspective on a shareable world--and to pose that voice alongside others as a source of countermemory and potential agency. Conceived as conversations, these essays brilliantly reflect that ethos as they re-read the cultural events of the past fifty years.

Author Biography

Robin Blaser is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
PART I POETICS
The Fire (1967)	3	(10)
Particles (1969)	13	(13)
The Stadium of the Mirror (1974)	26	(12)
Poetry and Positivisms (1989)	38	(26)
The Recovery of the Public World (1993)	64	(23)
Among Afterthoughts on This Occasion (1993)	87	(9)
out of the velvet—the denim—the straw of my mind (1999)	96	(2)
The Irreparable (2003)	98	(15)
PART II COMMENTARIES
The Practice of Outside (1975)	113	(51)
Imaginary Letters by Mary Butts: Afterword (1979)	164	(13)
George Bowering's Plain Song (1980)	177	(19)
The Violets: Charles Olson and Alfred North Whitehead (1983)	196	(33)
"Mind Canaries" (1986)	229	(24)
"My Vocabulary Did This to Me" (1987)	253	(9)
Infinite Worlds: The Poetry of Louis Dudek: Introduction (1988)	262	(21)
The "Elf" of It (1992)	283	(16)
Preface to the Early Poems of Robert Duncan (1995)	299	(6)
"Here Lies the Woodpecker Who Was Zeus" (1990	305	(45)
Bach's Belief (1995)	350	(19)
Love Will Eat the Empire: A Commentary on the Essays of Robin Blase	369	(88)
Miriam Nichols
Chronology	401	(10)
Editor's Notes	411	(46)
Bibliography
Works Cited	457	(17)
Works by Robin Blaser	474	(4)
Works about Robin Blaser	478	(3)
Acknowledgments of Permissions	481	(6)
Index	487