Introducer - Roy Kiyooka
00:00:00.00
It's my pleasure this evening to introduce to you Robin Blaser, recently of Vancouver, and a little bit before that, from San Francisco and elsewhere. Can you hear me? Can you all hear me? Okay. Well, I haven't really a great deal to say, I wanted to say simply that I met Robin Blaser in June of 1964, the occasion was the usual round of parties and a rather un-memorable reading, and a marvelous day out into the countryside, and I also had on that occasion the pleasure of meeting two very close friends of his, Stan Persky and Jack Spicer. I'll read you this little sort of resume of his career. He was born in Idaho, and he studied at Northwestern and Berkeley, and was a librarian at Harvard from 1955 to '59. He now teaches in exile at Simon Fraser University, has made an important contribution to the San Francisco poetry renaissance in the '50's and the '60's, and was one of a triumvirate, with Duncan and Spicer, that fulminated the serial poem on the poetry scene. Among his own serial poems are “The Faerie Queen” and “Image Nation”. His verse has been published in a number of contemporary poetry anthologies. They include, among many, Donald Allen's The New American Poetry, the Penguin New Writing in the United States, and A Controversy of Poets. And among his volumes of poetry are The Boston Poems 1956-58, The Moth Poem, Les Chimeres, and Cups. He is the editor of a West Coast magazine called the Pacific Nation. Now, Robin? Please read for us.
Annotation
00:02:56.90
Applause.
Robin Blaser
00:03:00.42
The marvelous thing about that list of books is that The Boston Poems, in fact, I think I will read one of those, was published and I decided I didn't like the book so there's one copy in the world and I own that copy. So I'm not sure it's fair, to call that a book. I don't think I--but I think I will read, open with that, it now dates back so many years, back to the Boston world, when [Jack] Spicer, and [John] Wieners and I were there together, and a very different scene from anything. [Charles] Olson was at Black Mountain, and Wieners in the centre at Boston. This poem is "The Hunger of Sound," and the date of it would be 1956.
Annotation
00:03:54.64
Reads "The Hunger of Sound" [INDEX: serial poem, poetry, child, image, star, hunger, tree, time, sound, poem, man, wife, house, boy, Dante, book, German, gun, work, chaos, joy]
Robin Blaser
00:10:38.35
Now I, I'm a little confused because I've changed the reading now because it was very nice to have people ask for things, so I think I'll read "Cups," which is a...I've worked since 1960 on a book called The Holy Forest and that is composed of several serial poems, the first of which is "Cups," and that is followed by one called "The Park," and one called "The Faerie Queen," then "The Moth Poem," and then the, then there is a group, translated from Gerard de Nerval, "Les Chimeres," which is also a serial poem, and finally a group called "The Holy Forest," an unfinished group, and I thought I would read "Cups" and then a section, do a little thing on my poetics, an intermission, and then read, if you still are with me, the section I've just finished, called "The Holy Forest." This is "Cups."
Annotation
00:11:47.96
Reads "Cups" [INDEX: serial poem, cup, nature, iris, flower, tree, poem, poetry, window, sex, Dante, love, spring, truck, goat, father, hunter, blood, dark, semen, skin, whistle, sound]
Robin Blaser
00:22:58.58
Now I'm going to move to my essay called "The Fire," which is meant to, is meant to talk about what people call poetics, I guess. It certainly talks about what I intend to do, what I am doing.
Annotation
00:23:28.69
Reads "The Fire" [an essay] [INDEX: poetry, poetics, sight, sound, intellect, Louis Zukofsky, San Francisco, invisibility, emotion, body, earth, god, reality, conceptual, difficulty, image, conceptual, Persky, imagination, language, Charles Olson, Walden, Melville, Pound, narrative, Jack Spicer, Ovid]
Annotation
00:31:57.13
Recording ends, mid-phrase, on first CD.
Annotation
00:31:57.13
Recording recommences on second CD; unknown amount of time elapsed.
Robin Blaser
00:31:57.13
Continues reading "The Fire Essay" [INDEX: family, idiom, English, American, French, Orphic, Orpheus, Dionysus, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, imagery, Leibniz, Spinoza, Francis Yeats, monads, Nerval]
Annotation
00:42:33.62
Some squeaking is heard on recording, as if from tape reel, starting at this point;
Robin Blaser
00:43:29.04
I won't go on to the rest of the essay, I think that's enough. Now...should we have a break, for a minute? Is it the right time for a break? Do you want a break? Because the next section has thirty-two poems, and not great long ones, but it's a move through the...
Annotation
00:43:57.17
Cut/Edit made in tape, mid-phrase; unknown amount of time elapsed.
Annotation
00:43:57.25
Reads ["...the drive to the spring mountains"] (beginning lost on recording). [INDEX: nature, drive, tree, heart, love, stone, song, star, forest, fire, night, translation.]
Annotation
00:44:17.14
Reads “The Prints” [INDEX: Nerval, prince, tree, fantasy, heart]
Annotation
00:44:47.88
Reads “Love” [INDEX: water, love, night]
Annotation
00:45:18.57
Reads "The Private I" [IMAGE: dog, moon, wind, white, black, earth, water, wind]
Annotation
00:46:18.32
Reads "Song" [INDEX: Nerval, song, night, horse]
Annotation
00:46:52.56
Reads "Translation" [INDEX: ash, Mount St. Helen's, fire, tree]
Annotation
00:47:23.14
Reads "1st Tale, Lost" [INDEX: sweet, child, tale, bird, sound]
Annotation
00:48:09.01
Reads "2nd Tale, Returned" [INDEX: brother, sister, child, fear, story, water, love, magic, air, found]
Annotation
00:49:48.01
Reads "At Last" [INDEX: place, tree, story, youth, body]
Annotation
00:50:29.78
Reads "Aphrodite of the Leaves" [INDEX: city, light, Aphrodite, place]
Annotation
00:51:02.47
Reads "Winter Words" [INDEX: fountain, silence, cold, invisible]
Annotation
00:51:39.53
Reads "The Stories" [INDEX: table, supper, sound, imagination, taste, radio]
Annotation
00:52:23.02
Reads "The City" [INDEX: lover, city, Wandering Jew, voice, water, radio, light, fountain]
Annotation
00:53:12.96
Reads "The Translator: A Tale" [INDEX: water, circle, tale, translation, shadow, sex, moth, flight]
Annotation
00:54:31.44
[inaudible] Reads ["...and returns, it is easy to personify"] [INDEX: head, personification, woman, love, disease, nature, moon, Blake, star, city, place, Odyssey, story, night, word]
Annotation
00:56:34.45
Reads "A Gift: Homage to Creeley" [INDEX: room, house, table, soul, city, language, Wells Fargo, poet, love]
Annotation
00:57:30.85
Reads "Bottom's Dream" [INDEX: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bottom, solitude, translation, city, love, glass]
Annotation
00:58:18.78
Reads "The Finder" [INDEX: tree, window, English Bay, Vancouver, ship, body, blood, intellect, violence, death, glass]
Annotation
00:59:35.06
Reads "Out of the Window, the Sea is a Fire" [INDEX: nature, earth, sea, fire, heart, city, building, loss, invisible]
Annotation
01:00:45.85
Reads "Merlin" [INDEX: action, blackbird, glass, companion, house, window, tree, unity, poetry, city, future, movement]
Annotation
01:01:44.15
Reads "The Cry of Merlin" (unfinished reading on recording) [INDEX: stone, blue, spiritual, image, man, room, story, sea, sex, body, love, radio, Daphne]
Annotation
01:03:55.35
Break/distortion in tape; recording recommences mid-phrase as Blaser introduces his last work.
Robin Blaser
01:03:57.69
I stood between the two in the marriage ceremony and replaced the psalms that are given, at one point, that was my gift as well as my blessing, and this is the poem I wrote for that wedding. "Image Nation 6: a marriage poem for Gladys Hindmarch and Cliff Anston."
Annotation
01:04:15.17
Reads "Image Nation 6: a marriage poem for Gladys Hindmarch and Cliff Anston." [INDEX: marriage, tree, Gladys Hindmarch, Cliff Anston, vision, gift, occasional poem, ring, unity, image, invisible]
Robin Blaser
01:05:27.21
Thank you.
Annotation
01:05:30.16
END OF RECORDING.
