The Astonishment Tapes: Talks on Poetry and Autobiography with Robin Blaser and Friends


"Robin Blaser is in his element in these monologues in interview format — personable, pedagogic, and himself a 'high-energy construct,' to not-quite-cite Charles Olson. By virtue of this book, the reader experiences Blaser as a unique force field of magnetic knowledge and charismatic charm. He is at home among the poets, themselves practitioners and friends, meeting in 1974 at someone’s house in Vancouver. The agenda is mixed: the taped sessions from which these talks are transcribed were apparently proposed by Warren Tallman to constitute or contribute to Blaser’s autobiographical memoir, and probably to dig into the complex nexus of a famous triad: Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Blaser. Their comradeship, quarrels, spites, and splits (among those involving other intimates) are one tale of the formation and impact of the 'Berkeley' or 'San Francisco Renaissance' in the New [North] American Poetry, a poetics and practice — with its accompanying lore — that energized these Canadian poets in distinctive ways. ..."
Jacket2: In his element
Bookslut
Google: The Astonishment Tapes
The Astonishment Tapes
Project MUSE
Of Robin Blaser

November 2007: EPC, November 2009: Robin Blaser (1925 - 2009), March 2010: The Moth Poem, Les Chimeres, 2011 February: The Holy Forest, 2011 July: "Image-Nation 21 (territory", 2007 November: Jack Spicer, 2010 February: mad cartographer (PoemTalk #28), 2010 April: Manroot and Acts, 2011 January: 5 Poems by Jack Spicer, 2012 July: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, 2015 January: 'Absolutely temporary': Spicer, Burgess, and the ephemerality of coterie, 2015 March: San Francisco Renaissance

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