My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

ROBIN ON HIS OWN 169
'mother may It''') but rarely from this to thought. Such period exercises
convinced me-I was then, as now, eager, not to say anxious, to be convinced
of that which I was already convinced-that rationalist thought
of this kind was mannerist at best, a not-quite-harmless hobby for ethicists
on vacation from the entangling "restlessness" I and "disturbed meanings"2
which no manner of mannerism could hope to smooth over.
I am not there where I am the plaything
of my thought
I think about what I am
there where
I do not think! am thinking (135)
Still, it was the philosophers, or one of them, that pointed me in the direction
of Blaser, who was, in those days as now, a blazing light in the dustbowl
of campus ratiocination, a Northwest beacon on which I could set
my poetic compass: "the Far West of the mind" (134).
Robin Blaser was and remains my introduction to, not, oh my god,
postwar North American poetry, the New American poetry, the San Francisco
Renaissance, the Boston Gang, Canadian postmodemism, poets of
the 50s generation, poet-critics, poetics professors, serial poetry, the
Magic Workshop Circle, renegade artists of Idaho, the practice of outside,
the poetics of citation, the Vancouver scene, or, indeed, the new Nervalians
(a.k.a. Robin and the Chimeras-
I wanna see those chimeras swing
Just like in frays gone by
Let me hear those chimeras sting
Chirpin' at the voids in the sky
-) not to underplay the value of all such frames, which we will happily
continue with over the next few days.
Blaser, that is, was my introduction-at the crucial point in my life when
writing poetry was becoming central-not just to particular poets and contexts
of poets, but more importantly to possibilities for poetry. Robin
Blaser's work is an induction into poetry as a "shattered" (151) mapping of
the uncharitable yet-always-being charted aspirations and desperations,
inhabitations and reparations, of the soul in and as language. It is an induce-
1. Robin Blaser, "The Recovery of the Public World", draft MS, p. 34. Subsequent references
to this essay are preceded by "RPW".
2. Robin Blaser, "The Violets: Charles Olson and Alfred North Whitehead", Line 2 (1983):
61. Subsequent references to this essay are preceded by 'V". In Cups: "AI disturbance in the cone I
of weather"; reprinted in Blaser, The Holy Forest (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1993), p. 3. Subsequent
references to The Holy Forest are given by page number alone. See also note 5.