Robin Blaser Home Page

ROBIN BLASER BIO NOTES

AND PUBLICATIONS

 

May 18, 1925 – May 7, 2009

 

Further information about Robin Blaser is available from Miriam Nichols, Professor of American Literature, University College of the Fraser Valley

nicholsm@ucfv.bc.ca

                                                                                                                                    Photo credit: © 2002 Peter Quartermain   



POETRY

 

The Moth Poem (San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1964)
Les Chimères: Translations of Nerval for Fran Herndon (San Francisco: Open Space, 1969)
Cups (San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1968)

Image Nations 1-12 & The Stadium of the Mirror (London: Ferry Press, 1974)

Image Nations 13 & 14, Luck Unluck Oneluck, Sky-stone, Suddenly, Gathering (North Vancouver: Cobblestone Press, 1975)
Harp Trees (Vancouver: Sun Stone House & Cobblestone Press, 1977)
Image Nation 15: The Lacquerhouse (Vancouver: W. Hoffer, 1981)

Syntax (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1983)
The Faerie Queene and The Park (Vancouver: Fissure Books, 1987)
Pell Mell (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1988)
The Holy Forest (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1993)

Nomad (Vancouver: Slug Press, 1995)
Wanders, with Meredith Quartermain (Vancouver: Nomados, 2002)
 
 


RECORDINGS

Astonishments, Contemporary Literature Collection, W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University Library, 1974

Jonathan Cross, Introduction to The Last Supper, Compact Disk (Glyndebourne Productions Ltd, 2000)

The Holy Forest, with Roy Kiyooka, Compact Disk issued with Collapse no. 1 (1995)


ESSAYS


"The Fire," in The Poetics of the New American Poetry, edited by Donald Allen and Warren Tallmen (New York: Grove Press, 1974)

"The Metaphysics of Light," Capilano Review 6 (1974) [transcription from Astonishments edited by Daphne Marlatt]
"The Practice of Outside" in The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, edited by Robin Blaser (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975)

Afterword in Mary Butts, Imaginary Letters (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1979)

Introduction in George Bowering, Particular Accidents: Selected Poems (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1980)

"The Violets: Charles Olson and Alfred North Whitehead" Line no. 2 (1983)

"My Vocabulary Did This To Me," Acts 6 (1987)

Introduction in Louis Dudek, Infinite Worlds: The Poetry of Louis Dudek (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1988)

"Poetry and Positivisms," in Silence, the Sacred and the Word, edited by E. D. Blodgett and Harold Coward (Calgary: Calgary Institute for the Humanities, 1989)

"The Elf of It" in Robert Duncan: Drawings and Decorated Books, edited by Christopher Wagstaff (San Francisco: Rose Books, 1992)

"The Recovery of the Public World" and "Among Afterthoughts on This Occasion," in Reflections on Cultural Policy, Past, Present and Future, edited by Blaser, Evan Alderson, and Harold Coward (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press for the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, 1993)

"Here Lies the Woodpecker Who Was Zeus," in A Sacred Quest, edited by Christopher Wagstaff (Kingston, N.Y.: McPherson, 1995)

Preface to the Early Poems of Robert Duncan (Toronto & Buffalo: Shuffaloff, 1995)

"Thinking about Irreparables, a talk," Raddle Moon 18 [2000?]

"The Irreparable," a lecture given at Temple University, Philadelphia and University of Maine at Orono, October 2002
 


EDITOR

Pacific Nation, no 1 (1967)

Pacific Nation, no 2 (1969) with Stan Persky

The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1975)

Mary Butts, Imaginary Letters (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1979)

George Bowering, Particular Accidents: Selected Poems (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1980)

Art and Reality: A Casebook of Concern, with Rob Dunham (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1986)

Louis Dudek, Infinite Worlds: The Poetry of Louis Dudek (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1988)

Reflections on Cultural Policy, Past, Present and Future, with Evan Alderson, and Harold Coward (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press for the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, 1993)

 


TRANSLATIONS

"Artaud on Nerval" with Richard Ross, Pacific Nation no. 1 (1967)

Les Chimères: Translations of Nerval for Fran Herndon (San Francisco: Open Space, 1969)

"Pindar's Seventh Olympic Hymn," Caterpillar 12 (July 1970)
 


LIBRETTO

The Last Supper, Music by Sir Harrison Birtwistle (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 2000)


UNCOLLECTED PUBLICATIONS

"Apparitors," in A Poetry Folio (San Francisco: Auerhahn Press, 1964)

"Kimm," Broadside (Prince George, B.C.: Caledonia Writing Series, 1977)

"Of is the word love without the initial consonant," Broadside (Vancouver: Slug Press, 1979)

"Hello!," Sulfur 37 (Fall 1995)

"Nomad," Sulfur 37 (Fall 1995)

"Shipped Shape" West Coast Line 36 35/3 (Winter 2001-02)

"The Truth is Laughter 18" West Coast Line 36 35/3 (Winter 2001-02)

"The Truth is Laughter 19" West Coast Line 36 35/3 (Winter 2001-02)

"The Truth is Laughter 20" West Coast Line 36 35/3 (Winter 2001-02)

"The Truth is Laughter 21" West Coast Line 36 35/3 (Winter 2001-02)

"Mind Canaries," in Christos Dikeakos (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1986)

 


CORRESPONDENCE

 

"A Correspondence," Capilano Review 2:17/18 [A Festschrift for Robin] (1996) [responses to questions by Lisa Robertson]

 

Charles Olson-Robin Blaser Correspondence, edited by Miriam Nichols and Ralph Maud, forthcoming in the Minutes of the Charles Olson Society (spring 2003)

 


APPOINTMENTS & ENGAGEMENTS

Assistant Librarian in Cataloguing, Widener Library, Harvard (1955-1959)

English Department, Simon Fraser University  (1966-1986)
Naropa University Summer Writing Program (1995, 2000 inter alia)

Recovery of the Public World Conference, Vancouver (1995)

University of California at Davis, 70th Birthday Celebration (1995)

Reading Tour of English Cities, with Ed Dorn (1998)

San Francisco Poetry Centre, 75th Birthday Celebration (2000)

International Festival of Poetry at Coimbra, Portugal (2000)

Writer in Residence, Temple University (October 2002)

 


SCHOOLS

University of California, Berkeley (1944-1955)


PERSONAL

Date of Birth: 18 May 1925, Denver Colorado
Robin Blaser died in Vancouver on May 7, 2009
 


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