6039.- ROBIN BLASER

Robin Blaser

Robin Francis Blaser (Nació el 18 mayo 1925 y murió el 7 mayo 2009) fue un escritor y poeta, y vivió tanto en Estados Unidos como en Canadá.

Nacido en Denver, Colorado, Blaser, se crió en Idaho, y llegó a Berkeley, California, en 1944. Allí conoció a Jack Spicer y Robert Duncan, convirtiéndose en una figura clave en el Renacimiento de San Francisco de los años 1950 y comienzos de 1960. Se trasladó a Canadá en 1966, uniéndose a la facultad de la Universidad Simon Fraser, después de la jubilación anticipada en la década de 1980, ocupó el cargo de Profesor Emérito. Vivió en el Kitsilano barrio de Vancouver, Columbia Británica.

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 0520245938 (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, 2000

GARZAS


Vi frio trueno sobre el pasto,
los negros húmedos árboles de mi humanidad, mi piel.


Cuánto amor perdido colgando ahí
sin honestidad.
me agarro a esos hombres que escogieron
colgar al viento
sin honestidad.
Es que el cuerpo miente con su piel...


Arropado por mis palabras digo que la serpiente
muda su piel sin honestidad.


Y ellos
colgados ahí con cierta simetría
murieron jóvenes
como garzas orgullosas en su paisaje.


Ahora los años se han deslizado cautelosos, y nadie
más joven sabe
que el brusco dardo del aliento es
nuestra porción de honestidad.










Pentimento


miró él, miró ella por todas partes
para la satisfacción
de la palabra Dios–
entre caras perplejas
pastoreando las vacas rojas–


una tos leve en lo alto de la montaña –
cuando alguien divisó
en el magnus animus,
la palabra Dios debe haber sido una oclusión glótica


"En alguna parte," dijeron
sobre la carnicería que parpadea–
madera de cedro , hisopo, y escarlata–
y la lámpara ardiente pasó
entre esas piezas –
la sangre salpicó en ariel


bien, conducía al cielo,
una cara en la luna, pero no podía
poner el pie en el freno


¡Ariel! ¡Ariel! la vida como vida
se mueve a través de esto y fino–


¡Ariel! ¡Ariel! la vida como vida
acechada por una deidad ausente,
por qué elegiste ideomotoring,
religioso y secular, Absolutos
de la calma que viene, incapaz
de bailar la ocasión


yo, quien ha investigado sus preguntas,
estaba allí bailando en el risco,
donde los cuervos comen nieve–mis corazones
latiendo toda mi vida, encontrando un torso
de yeso con una etiqueta en él que decía
que era de Walt Whitman–hierba del maná


puse ese verso en un coco y me lo bebí todo


los vecinos tienen un mirlo de madera –muy quieto
hasta que el viento golpea–las alas de madera, de gimoteos–
acontecimientos–una paleta del tiempo–la veleta de
la manera en que el viento fluye–templo o iglesia
del pensamiento–aspa de un molino de viento–barba
de una pluma–paleta de un congreso de tales
pájaros–tentativa de paleta–para ver direcciones–
por el amor del destino–fuente nueva
el humo del arte


el yo es un pentimento – la libertad de Ariel


–para Patrick Wright
el 1 de enero de 2000






Pentimento


did he, did she look everywhere
for the contentment
of the word God–
among puzzled faces
herding the red cows–


a slight cough on the mountain top–
when someone looked out
at the magnus animus,
the word God must have been a glottal stop


"Somewhere," they said
over the flickering butchery -
cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet -
and the burning lamp passed
among those pieces–
the blood splashed on ariel


well, I was driving to heaven,
a face in the moon, but couldn't
get my foot on the brake


Ariel! Ariel! life as life
moves through this and thin–


Ariel! Ariel! life as life
stalked by a truant deity,
why did you chose ideomotoring,
religious and secular, Absolutes
of coming stillness, unable
to dance chance


I, who has gone into his questions,
I was there dancing on the leck,
where crows eat snow–my hearts
racing all my life, finding a plaster
torso with a tag on it that said
it was Walt Whitman's–manna grass


I put that line in a coconut and drank it up


the neighbors have a wooden robin–very still
'til the wind hits–wooden, whining wings–
events–a weather vane –weathercock of
the way the wind flows–fane or fana
of thought–vane of a windmill–vane
of a feather - vane of a congress of such
birds–vaned attempt–to see directions–
for the love of destination–new fountain
the smoke of art


the I is a pentimento–Ariel's freedom


–for Patrick Wright
1 January, 2000










The Hunger of Sound


1


I asked a man to consider poetry.
I said
Begin then with this image:
A child's head bends in the light,
slips like a star across a man's mentality.
He and his guardian cat reach for a word.
Among stars, a man becomes a giant.
Take this image:
the masked face of a child,
insatiable of light.
A word found,
a child's voice—
this hunger of gulls
that fish from the broken edge of ice.


The child says, 'Draw me,'
and my hand trembles like a tree
first planted in chaos.
Hear the words sound a child's joy.
What is uprooted:
Hear the wind howl at a world of exact proportions.
A shape that was like him.
Hear the sound inhabit the mind,
bells in an orchard.
The words knock against chaos.


How measured a time that childhood,
joy and terror counted like marbles.
Beyond endurance, 10 fingers.
How measured the growth of the limbs upward.
Each word counted. The returning birds
or the new leaves counted.
On 10 fingers
the flowering peach of the orchard,
each blossom counted and named.
A child's voice
with the hunger of pigeons,
'10,000 '








2


A lesson in speech, perhaps.
The grasp
d stone.
A tink in the silence.
We heard it.
Part of a man
worn away in his clarity.
This poem
skin-tight for his black body
(white
in the daylight).
A night sound.
He is not against
even the chaos.
Bird
turned up
shouted out
wakes him.
He
tastes the joy of a flexed tongue.
Left
to his own devices,
speech is given
to the fish of the water
(in silence, speech)
to the snake by the highway
(sound in the dry earth).
Decisions, part his
as we teach him
the household,
object,.
the taste of milk,
and the returning
breast
the mind seeks.
As if
The Man unsaid what he should say,
uncertain, kept it simple, direct
and downright, licking stones
to improve their colour. Not the first time
; as if
The Wife damned his words
out of which came a new sound,
damned the long glass mirror
he could lie upon.


What to teach
even a boy about
household objects.
Red lacquer
flowers—a Persian symmetry—
on a brass spout.
Or a candy dish,
gold, with a hanging bird,
green and blue lacquer.
Both in this house.
They bought him a toy sax
for a household object.
A lesson in speech,
perhaps. A darting tongue
of courage.
Read Dante without words.
(By Doré.)
I try now to remember
what I thought of hell.
A small head
bent over the big pages.
And now
borrowed the terrible trees
and
the whole image of Dante.
His assertion:
that he did not invent Beatrice.
He invented
nothing.
Bent to return the torn leaves
and cracked bark
to their wounds.
What to teach
of bright
bowls, of books, of fire,
the magic salamander,
that a child may have there sounds stuck
in his growing throat.
That
from among the Germans, we chose a whore
to fill her womb with bullets
That
we tossed coins.
(glint in the air)
before we split a man's belly.
That
we had courage to stand in sub-zero air
and piss on the machine gun to unfreeze
it 'Tomorrow,'
the child says,
'take me to the sea.'
A boatman calls,
'A good catch.
A day's work
and well done.'
Sound
lapping at edges.
A hand
on the quick-silver.
A man
returns each day with his labour.
What to teach
of the process
of the unsounded chaos
or the thief of speech.
From the mouth
a stone has dropped.
We begin a monument.
Unsaid and uncertain.
It is time
to begin the alphabet.
The lesson:
(if
the mouth blossom)
words so accurate
of agony
of chaos
of joy
we need not
fear the cat
will suck the child's breath.
Words
like our daily bread.
Words
so sure
that if stolen
they will call back:
as if (the word yelled, caught in the car window)
'A Bread-Bandit,' a first lover,
the wind beginning in the East,
the snake of the morning,
a quick uncurling light
on the body, and this man,
a monument to deeds of men,
hanged bloody now,
hanged here between mornings,
among these deeds
stiff-legged like a heron,
Listen.








3


I asked a man to consider poetry.
He said, 'There is no joy in it.'
I was unsure in these sounds
and unable to knock against chaos.
Across clear sound the boatman sings
like a star in our firmament.
He bends to an outward journey.


I said: there is joy in this image:
10,000 blossoms to one tree in the orchard
counted and named. The measure of childhood
was how many trees stood shining and white,
stood bare to the rain, naked and wet.
And joy in the small face reflecting
the white surface of the trees.


It was joy to tear at the earth like a scorpion.
The insect blood turned man or child god.
The small face shown a jewel
or a leaf turning windward. This child's head
twists. A broken branch
on the dark wet grass.


I said:
My emblem became a tree. Stood
tall and could both bend and straighten. Rode
on the hills of New Hampshire a great hunter.
Ice-caught gestures of the trees
turn inward.


This is a gesture. The words stopped
there—part of the forest.
'I, poet,' the man said, and the child
measured his fortune.
I said:
It was the damp earth. Rot
killing the young pines. Rot
feeding the star flowers. White cover
of my childhood, like gathering stars.
White rot in the wood.


The words killed there in the blossoming mouth
are uncounted. The light of the body bends over us,
out of the bestial torment, Dante's head.
The word becomes a star
or the image of a star
or star-fire in our limbs.


A child's head twists in the night
like snakes.
'Goodnight.
Your saxophone is by your bed.
Think of starlings and their sharp quick sounds.
Goodnight.'


for Lars Balas