By Judith Fitzgerald
Canada and the world mourns the loss of a seminal figure in English-language poetry and poetics today: One of our greatest has passed away. Born in Denver, CO (18 May 1925), the incomparable and much-loved poet Robin Blaser grew up in Idaho before landing in Berkeley, CA in 1944. It was there he met Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer and Robert Creeley among other key members of the movement that would come to be known as the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and early 1960s. When he settled in Canada in 1966, he put down roots in Vancouver's artist-friendly neighbourhood of Kitsilano and joined the department of English at Simon Fraser University (where his friend, poet and professor George Bowering, also taught; both poets, in fact, hold positions of SFU Professors Emeriti).
George Bowering: "When the news came that Robin Blaser had an inoperable brain tumour, people started flying to Vancouver to talk with him, one of the great privileges of our time. Blaser was a rare and recondite and luminous poet, but others loved him. Here is the right word: they cherished him. Now we have the poems, a treasure that arrived in our lifetime. One is not at all embarrassed this time to speak in superlatives. When he wrote long poems addressed to Dante and Duncan as his great companions, we had no trouble going along with that. Robin did not put up with any crap from politicians or poets who put themselves before the world and its languages. And he did everything in style. When one of us would push him in his wheelchair and down to his chosen spot outside the hospital for a cigarette, he wore his favourite beret. When we gathered at the hospice to be with his sleeping person in the last couple of days, we shared martinis and Blaser stories. Now, I would like to suggest that we honour Robin today by spending the early afternoon in our housecoats, and reading Maimonides."
Blaser (who proudly became a Canadian citizen in 1974), proved an integral and influential figure in the west-coast poetic flowering and established himself as an important voice in the experimental movement whose influence still sings in the works of some of the greatest poets of both his and subsequent generations, not the least of which include Bowering, Steve McCaffery, Daphne Marlatt, bp Nichol and Erin Mouré.
Erin Mouré: "Robin's death leaves an irrevocable hole in our poetic lives. A man of grace and with a deep philosophical and social conscience and relationship with language, he leaves shoes that can't be filled. We can only continue dedicating ourselves to poetry, and to try to bring grace and strength to all that we do in poetry, to honour him . . . And his laugh! Truth is laughter, he said. So laugh we must (even though he always laughed first, as he got the joke quicker than anyone) . . ."
The author of 1977's Harp Trees, 1983's Syntax as well as Pell Mell (1988) and his collected lifework, The Holy Forest (1993), perhaps his greatest contribution to The Tradition, Blaser's work was anthologised by Donald Allen in The New American Poetry while Even on Sunday, edited by the poet and Miriam Nichols (2002), followed the 1998 publication of The Recovery of the Public World: Essays on Poetics in Honour of Robin Blaser (edited by Charles Watts and Edward Byrne).
Daphne Marlatt: "the last words in Robin's The Holy Forest: 'language is love.' much as he could rail against the misuses of language, the terrible injustices we inflict on one another, he worked always towards that open potential that pure-pitch words can offer, the sheer loving openness of a mirroring intelligence in language. now his 'window-heart' has shattered & we have lost a great spirit. so thankful his words live on."
In 2006, Blaser received a special Lifetime-Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry (which also awarded the poet the Griffin Prize itself in 2008).
p.s. Visit Patrick Kurp's moving tribute to Blaser, "The Rebellion of Particulars," at Anecdotal Evidence; and, for a lovely background profile of the man himself, you'll learn a great deal concerning his work, world, life and beliefs in "The Hippest Man on Earth" (inked by Douglas Todd)
