Robin Blaser Centennial Celebrations continue from here – with transcription of a June 2009 tribute/gathering that took place as part of the Summer Writing Program at Naropa
An audio recording of the event is available – here
Anne Waldman introduces and compères the program, which features readings and anecdotes from her, and from fellow-poets, and Naropa faculty members, Anselm Hollo, and Bobbie Louise Hawkins. In addition, Naropa student Travis Cebula speaks on behalf of Robin’s friend, Elizabeth Robinson. Recordings of Blaser from the Naropa archives are also included.
AW: Good afternoon You’re all over there. Maybe that means something. So some of us wanted to gather together today to pay a little hommage to Robin Blaser who was a dear friend to this school and came and taught us on many occasions and was supposed to be part of our Summer Writing Program. He had a.. I know he had very much wanted to be here and had agreed to come (at least when I spoke to him in the Fall). He made a trip to Colorado (he was actually born in Denver, Colorado, in… I’ll get the dates right, the exact date, born May 18th, 1925, in Denver, Colorado). So he had come as a guest of the Writing Program, the PhD Writing Program, in Denver (University of Colorado) in the Fall and Elizabeth Robinson, who is on our faculty here, was able to bring Robin to Naropa. So he visited us here and visited her class and saw some of the community then. Then he passed away on May 7th, 2009. And I’m sure some of you are familiar with his story (there are things on-line, I won’t go into all of it there, but, he was very much associated with the.. what is referred to as the San Francisco Renaissance and was one of the great members of the triad – the triumvirate, as I think (Robert) Creeley calls them – of Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and then Robin Blaser, and they had their ups and downs, and then, in 1966, Robin actually moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, and then became a citizen there, I think about four or five years later, in the ‘Seventies, and made his home there, and taught at Simon Fraser (University) and was part of a wonderful poetry culture and community, and then traveled, as a guest, to many other places, but that was his central location. His great book The Holy Forest. I think you can still find (maybe not so readily, but.. (see Anselm Hollo’s correction of this, following Anne’s comments) ..I wanted to read a little bit from a statement of his, which is a poetics statement, and he says –
It seems to me that the whole marvelous thing of open form is a traditional and an American problem…the whole thing came in a geography where the traditional forms would no longer hold our purposes. I was very moved when, some years ago, I was reading a scholarly book by Jo Miles – [that’s Josephine Miles, who’s also part of this San Francisco community and taught at Berkeley] in which she is making an argument for the sublime poem…and she begins to talk about the narrative of the spirit. I think the key word here is narrative – the story of persons, events, activities, images, which tell the tale of the spirit.
I’m interested in a particular kind of narrative – what Jack Spicer and I agreed to call in our own work the serial poem – that is a narrative which refuses to adopt an imposed story line, and completes itself only in the sequence of poems, if, in fact, a reader insists upon a definition of completion which is separate from the activity of the poems themselves. The poems tend to act as a sequence of energies which run out when so much of a tale is told. I like to describe this in Ovidian terms, as a carmen perpetuum, a continuous song in which the fragmented subject matter is only apparently disconnected – “to tell of bodies/ transformed/into new shapes/you gods, whose power/worked all transformations,/help the poet’s breathing,/lead my continuous song/from the beginning/ to the present world”
And then I… these are a few lines by Robert Creeley who wrote the forward to The Holy Forest, published by Coach House (Press) [Talon Books] – “Put it that one is to be somewhere in this transforming, accumulating poetry – not simply led to a conclusion, but be taken by just such a magical carmen perpetuum to all the image-nations of this remarkable revivifying world. How lovely that neither concept nor any other obligating pattern can enclose us, if we can “come into the world”, as Charles Olson put it, recognizing that “we do what we know before we know what we do”. The authority in any act is rooted here,
What comes then to be in the complexly layered “song” of these poems is an increasingly familiar presence, a person quite literal to any life. There is no fact of a didactic history, however much a particularizing story has been told and told again. Time folds and unfolds (“depli“) continuously all that is said, and there person each one presumes to know has momently to be recognized anew.”
and this is from a poem of Robin’s – (“in the treetops”) – “the child, the childofthe big shot, /labourer’s/child, child of the fool, child of railroads, child of trees,/ child that is deformed. child of fireworks, child of/colour-/lessness, child of damask, Mage’s child, the child born/with/ twenty-two folds at least his or her concern is only to /unfold herself himself, curious one or the other’s life/ is then, complete under that form he or she dies/ there’s/ no fold left for one the other to undo in the land of magic….”
And a few more notes on his life. There was a wonderful conference held and there are documents of that in The Capilano Review (it was1995, for Blaser’ s 70th birthday) and it was to pay homage to his contribution to Canadian poetry and the conference was called “The Recovery of the Public World” (a phrase borrowed from Hannah Arendt, who was someone Robin referred to frequently in his talks here about ethos, about some of the events of the last century). And many many people came and spoke, many people coming from the US as well. And I was there, and it was really like a circus, there were so many different moods. There was (the) very academic.. and. you know, wonderful papers on his work, with a lot of, you know, critical theory jargon. and footnotes, and a lot of people taking notes and presented in this sort of formal way, academic way. And then there were wonderful tributes from poets like Joanne Kyger and others, who were just magnetized by this event of honoring Robin. He was, like, this… like this sprite, I would say, (he) had this wonderful sprite-like energy that you’ll see in a moment when we play part of a lecture of his here (at) Naropa. And he was moving through all these different circles and one realized how many worlds he had inflected, and infected, with his amazing work, and also his amazing thinking. And there is a terrific essay in the (book), Civil Disobediences, which I think some of you were touching on in, (re) “the irreparable”, which is very, sort of, classic Robin, and we also have a text of his that we’re starting to edit on Dante and he presented some work from an opera he was working on (when he came here he did a lot of things), and also in the earlier years had taught workshops). And then there is a collection now of essays, so that’s more available. Okay, I think I will just.. You know, he was given wonderful prestigious awards toward the end of his life, a Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust (2006) and also won the annual Griffin Prize (2008). I talked to his long-time partner David Farwell a month ago and he described Robin’s wake. Also there’s a very good letter in the Disembodied Poetics anthology that Andrew Schelling and I edited, and then there’s a letter in the documents, you know, around the Kerouac School, where he addresses some of his concerns and why he left America and he’d been Catholic and had had real issues with various papal decisions and matters, especially, I believe it was in 1974 (maybe some of you know this) when the Pope came down on homosexuality. And we also had a very interesting correspondence that I wrote about for the Blaser hommage and he really… you know, a series of letters about Amendment 2 (which maybe some of you know about that history?). It was in Colorado again, one of those backward, as we’re seeing still in our world, you know, these backward amendments, or bills. to really deprive gay and lesbian and bi- people of certain basic inalienable rights. and so that Amendment 2 went all the way up to the Supreme Court. He was very awake and aware and outspoken in a very eloquent way on those issues.
So.. I miss his voice in the mix – (and there’s a bit of commentary in this letter in the book that also refers to the Republican Convention, and so on..) So he was… our conversations were very lively. He loved a martini – big martinis! – and he continued to smoke. He was able to smoke and drink pretty much up to the end. And there was (the) wonderful story (of) his wake, when people came and were incredibly festive with lots of food and drink. and that’s what he wanted (he didn’t want a religious ceremony). And his.. (I’ve forgotten the name of the town but it was a little bit outside of Vancouver where he’s buried and it’s on a little bit of a hillside with a stream running by) .So.. rest in peace, Robin, and we’re so grateful that your work is with us and that you had such a.. he had such a presence here at Naropa.
Ok…I’ll just run this down. We’re going to play an audio (tape) next and the poem title is “Of the Land of Culture” (“I flew too far into the future; a horror assailed me..”…” …saturated with poetry (Nietzsche whispering”), and after that Anselm Hollo will come up and speak
[Anne plays recording of Robin Blaser reading “Of the land of Culture“]
AH: Yeah, I don’t know how well you can see this. a lovely photograph of Robin. He..he didn’t quite look like that when I first met him, which may have been only a cule of years after this was taken but he had grown his hair long, raven black, and he was visiting Robert Creeley at Buffalo, And this was during the Vietnam War, so it must have been like ’66 or ’67, and, you know, I remember the talk on the table was mostly about, you know, whether Robert Bly‘s movement of Poets Against the War would really make any difference or not, you know, and I don’t think that either Robin or Robert really had any firm views about this, except that then we were joined by an activist student who was definitely of the opinion that one should… you know…one should write about it, and cited Denise Levertov, (who at the time had actually started writing about it) and he went on and on, (he went on a little too long), and, you know, was talking about “thousands dying”, and Creeley looked up and said, “Name one” And that sort of stopped the conversation on the part of the student alright, you know. And he said, “Why.. why should I name one?” And then Robert started talking about serving in Burma in the Red Cross section as a one-eyed ambulance driver (not losing many people, I don’t think), and that’s it, you know, that was our first encounter, but I had been reading him. I have original copies of his translations of a great French poet Gérard de Nerval called Les Chimères, and “The Moth Poem” and Cups,, which were.. you know, I found these in London where I was then living until the mid-Sixties, and I didn’t really – quote, unquote – “understand” them all that well. I mean, I did not really have his.. I had been reading (Jack) Spicer as well, (who I never met sadly), but, you know, I just.. I kept them. I kept those chapbooks, you know, and I would go back to them once in a while. And then forty years later, I meet him here (Naropa) – a wonderful, wonderful.. “sprite”, describes him well.. full of life, full of humor, not suffering fools gladly, (but not too impolitely, either). He was, he was very French, in some ways, you know, and also, I think, Native, American Indian, (but he looked more French than anything else, actually).
So I thought I’d read, read a poem or two of his that have, you know…I’ve always found attractive, they’re short, shorter than what he just read. This one’s from a book called Pell Mell, which…oh, by the way, actually, The Holy Forest in an expanded edition is available, University of California Press, and I think by now it’s gone into paper, so it’s, paperback, so now it’s.. yeah, and the essays were also published by University of California, so that’s great. I mean he’s..he’s a well-kept secret in some ways you know, although he has, as Anne mentioned.. he was very influential on the scene in Vancouver, and actually, you know, he..
I don’t think he ever felt that he had left his country. I think he felt America including Canada, you know. (He would probably gladly have included Mexico as well, you know – continental – yes! that’s right – “continental American” – sounds good, actually!) – “Anecdote” (“often I write on top of the/ stove’s hotplates – elements? -/and leave the notebook there/ overnight….”….”awesome sweet labourers/ of something”. This is from “Syntax” from “The Truth is Laughter” (“moving from one room to another” a shocked resilient heart”…”..”””I cannot, he wrote, consider death as anything/ but a removing from one room to another””) – that was (Thomas) Jefferson, who was a bit of a poet! – I mean, thank god he didn’t write poetry in the style of the times, but..
Now these are later short poems – “Dream” – (“I went madly to sleep..”..” waited quietly for Montagne the sweet friend”) – and finally, “It Springs on You.” – (single quotes) – “My mind plays in the distance, free..”…”and by accident brightness”)
AW: So next we’re going to look at about eight minutes of a lecture that Robin gave here in 1999 called “Where is Hell?” – so we need to turn out the lights and… Where is Hell from 1999 and of course all these things are in the archive and please avail yourself of these wonderful readings, teachings..
AH ..sensational archives..
AW: ..Well we have the.. Jen Tobias has been terrific. We have some terrific people working with the archive now and she provided us with a lot of Robin’s things, so she’s been looking into it..
It’s a. whole class and I really invite you to check it out, .have copies made, maybe some of you are doing research on Robin, it’d be wonderful, some of you who are here full-time, and even in the next weeks. So that’s a great little hit of his teaching.
So ok next up Bobbie, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, who knew Robin many years. I think one of Robin’s joys coming here was to spend time with Bobbie.
BLH: Everyone else here is more equipped than I am to speak of Robin’s poetry. I just wanted to talk about his vivacious face. He was absolutely beautiful. I think I met him first in 1959 and he was beautiful then and stayed beautiful forever, extraordinarily – And that…my friend Jo Bacon has a story of growing up in a small town outside New Orleans.Whenever anyone new would come to town the question asked would be – “Well, are they attractive?” – and Robin was simply infinitely attractive. He always had a young man adoring him and being there. When he finally met David Farwell of course that was the ultimate relationship, but up to that point, I’d go visit Ellen Tallman, for instance, who had been Warren Tallman‘s wife, who set up the (19)63 Poetry Conference, and visiting Warren…. Ellen Tallman lived in the ground floor of a house that Robin lived in the upper floors of. And I would go up to see Robin and it would be.. he would be in a robe, like in a kind of a bathrobe.. and we’d be.wafting around his space. He was one of those people who create an atmosphere of infinite expansive grace around himself. When you were with him, you felt very slim and elegant, and much taller! He just made you joyous, and whenever he opened his mouth he was this erudite international person. I mean, you felt like you were in the world when you were with Robin. Let me see, I made some notes – oh yes Robin and Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan were very intent (at least at one point, you don’t know how people fluctuate in and out) on the issue of whether an individual poet’s major influence was the duende, the angel, or the muse. Robin was definitely angelic. It was simply… I can’t imagine him looking for a duende. I had a great conversation, in a manner of speaking, with Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley at one point when they explained to me that I wasn’t allowed to have a muse because I was a woman and a muse is female, and I’m thinking fuck you, you know! – Let me see.. what else? – Ah..now.. Robin told me (well, at one point, I asked him) – this is about him always having an accompanying person – I said, “How do you do it?” – He said “When someone leaves, I simply look desolate and destroyed and my friends start sending people to me – and within all that there was a point when David Farwell arrived at the door, according to Robin – there was a knock on the door and here was David- and David is equally elegant and good-looking, and he arrived and Robin said, “Why are you here?” -and David, Robin told me, said, “For consolation” – And I thought, “Wonderful!”, you know – But then David apparently told someone else how they met and he didn’t say that that happened at all. So it’s hard to know what…. I think that’s almost what I’ve got. Yes thank you.
AW: So we were going to see if anyone here would like to get up and say a few words, I know therre was… oh you – Travis (Cebula), you’re there..I’m sorry…Travis was going to say some things that Elizabeth had passed on
TC: Now I don’t in any way really feel qualified to act as Elizabeth Robinson’s mouthpiece but, because she is a friend and she did ask me to say a few words, I will do my best to relate some of the things that she was feeling. She was just too overcome she felt, to speak, in front of a group, about Robin,
As Anne indicated at the start of the introduction, Robin Blaser came here last Fall as part of a trip and actually visited one of Elizabeth Robinson’s classes. It was an undergraduate workshop. Some of you here may have even been there for that experience. I sadly was not, I wish I had been. But, apparently, one of the things that he did while he was here was share poetry with the students, like all of us, and poetry that he by admission had not shared with anybody out loud before that day, and he chose us, the community at Naropa, to be the first ones to hear it in his own voice .And that was the anecdote that Elizabeth (who had, from what I understand, a close relationship with him), wanted to share to illustrate what she felt were two of the most significant aspects of Robin’s personality, which obviously are kindness and a grand generosity of spirit, which, in a week that we have dedicated to lineage, I think are quite significant. That gift of generosity of time, of our art, of support of other people’s art, are things that very much live on through Elizabeth, through all of the people sitting here, Anne, Anselm, Bobbie, Lisa (Berman) obviously – I see Julie Kazimer, sitting over there who’s also an instructor here. So, yes, I think that’s the spirit to keep in mind, one of the things that Robin Blaser offered to us.
Thank you
AW: Anyone else want to say anything? I was just going to read a short poem that was sent by a graduate of the graduate school – Soma Feldmar. who spent time, a lot of time with Robin and was seeing him, towards the end of his life, on several occasions, and visiting the hospice. and so on. So ..it’s called “Forever Language – for Robin Blaser” – “(And in your new room I wonder what views and does the air taste/Silence is no longer quiet./demands placed on the poet/keep language safe for poetry…..love lets you go on and on and on – clever bugger! – drat!) –
So we have what? just a few more minutes Lisa
LB: Five minutes.
AW: Okay why don’t we play a little of the last selection which is ..we’ll just do that first one track two? is that righr? – and this is called” The Ruler”. Thank you Lisa for putting this together
[Anne plays a recording of Robin Blaser reading”The Ruler”]
“The poem begins wth a gift from my friend David… ( ‘alligator, hippopotamus, fox, rhinoceros/and frog/ dog, bear, cat, mouse and badger…”… ‘with honey wrapped up in the intelligence/ between one boat and another”)
Thank you so much. Thank you Anselm, thank you Bobbie, thank you Travis (great that you’re here) and we have much more of Robin – Lisa and I are plotting to do some kind of Robin Blaser CD so stay posted. And I think this photo Lisa told me was taken maybe by Helen Adam… maybe some of you…
LB: I was wrong, it was actually… I apologize… (I think it was..)
AW: It’s such an unusual photo
Lectures, classes, readings, by Blaser (quite a trove of material!) can be accessed – here
&
a posthumous note on Robin Blaser’s Library