Robin Francis Blaser (May 18, 1925 â€" May 7, 2009) was an author and poet in both the United States and Canada.
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 San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and early 1960s. He moved to Canada in 1966, joining the faculty of Simon Fraser University; after taking early retirement in the 1980s, he held the position of Professor Emeritus. He lived in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver, British Columbia.
In June 1995, for Blaser's 70th birthday, a conference was held in Vancouver 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, Stan Persky 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).
Blaser was 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. Blaser won the Prize itself in 2008.
Bibliography
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
- The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser, 2007 ISBN 0-520-24593-8 (winner of the 2008 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize)
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
Opera libretto
- The Last Supper, the libretto for Harrison Birtwistle's opera (2000)
References
External links
- Robin Blaser Homepage at the Electronic Poetry Center
- Literary Encyclopedia entry
- Griffin Poetry Prize biography
- Griffin Poetry Prize reading, including video clip
- Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award
- Lyric Capability: the Syntax of Robin Blaser, an essay by Meredith Quartermain
- "Robyn Blaser and Friendship," a review essay by Richard Cole
- MP3 files of Blaser's readings and lectures
- Interview with Robin Blaser, conducted by John Sakkis
- Small Press Traffic honor
- Blaser's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
- Article on the Boosey & Hawkes website about the libretto of The Last Supper
- Robin Blaser's obituary notice from poet Charles Bernstein, including Bernstein's "Afterword" to The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser (2006)
- "Robin Blaser, 1925-2009: Death’s Duty" by Stan Persky
- ‘Showing us things both marvellous and horrific' by Sandra Martin in The Globe and Mail