GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE 2008Canadian Shortlist Book: The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser
Poet: Robin Blaser
Publisher: University of California Press Click the book cover or title to purchase The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser online. Click here to read an excerpt. Biography  Robin Blaser is one of North America’s most outstanding poets of the postwar period, having emerged from the Berkeley Renaissance of the 1940s and 1950s as a central figure in that burgeoning literary scene. He is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University and has published several books of poems and numerous essays, many of which are included in The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser (University of California Press, 2006). Blaser established himself as a key figure on the west coast of British Columbia and an important influence among Canadian experimental poets such as George Bowering, Steve McCaffery, bp Nichol, Erín Moure and Daphne Marlatt. Blaser also penned an English and Latin opera libretto entitled The Last Supper. On May 31st, 2006, the legendary poet was honoured with The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s first Lifetime Recognition Award. Summary The Holy Forest, now spanning five decades, is Blaser’s highly acclaimed lifelong serial poem. This long-awaited revised and expanded edition includes numerous published volumes of verse, the ongoing ‘Image-Nation’ and ‘Truth Is Laughter’ series and new work from 1994 to 2004. Blaser’s passion for word making draws inspiration from the major poets and philosophers of our time – from friends and peers such as Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer and Steve McCaffery to virtual companions in thought such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, among others. This comprehensive compilation of Blaser’s prophetic meditations on the histories, theories, emotions, experiments, and countermemories of the late twentieth century will stand as the definitive collection of his unique and luminous poetic oeuvre. Judges’ Citation “There is an irony in the presumption that the universe contains the “collected” poems of Robin Blaser. Within the five hundred pages of The Holy Forest moves a lifetime’s thought such as we are not used to or prepared for. Whitman was not fooling when he said that a poet, an extraordinary poet, can himself be a cosmos. But as sidereal as Blaser’s lines become, we never forget that the purpose is human living every day inside what is. In a review of an earlier volume with the same title (bravely published in Canada by Coach House and later listed by Talonbooks), Brian Fawcett wrote: “His truest poetic instinct is that cosmology is at once humanity’s fundamental pursuit – and the source of our most screamingly funny ironies, misapprehensions and pratfalls.” Blaser is solemn enough to approach Dante Alighieri as a “Great Companion,” and serious enough to maintain that “the truth is laughter” we might find some afternoon on the darkest pavement.” Suddenly, I live in a room named East
on the map of the West at the edge near the door cedars and alders
mix and tower,
full of ravens first thing each morning,
whose song is
a sharpness we quarrelled so
over the genius
of the heart
whose voice is capable they come on horseback
in the middle of the night,
two of them, with a horse for me,
and we ride, bareback
clinging to the white manes
at the edge of the sea-splash, burst open, to divine
the hidden and forgotten source,
who is transparent
where the moon drops out of the fog
to bathe,
but not to us the retied heart
where the wind glitters
for Ellen Tallman
From The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser, by Robin Blaser
Copyright © 2006 The Regents of the University of California |
Back to top More about Robin Blaser The following are links to other Web sites with information about poet Robin Blaser. (Note: All links to external Web sites open in a new browser window.) Have you read The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser? Click here to send us your comments. Back to top Photo credit: Joy von Tiedemann Note: Summaries are taken from promotional materials supplied by the publisher, unless otherwise noted. |
