A Literary Biography of Robin Blaser by Miriam Nichols

Author:Miriam Nichols
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030183271
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Pacific Nation: Poetry and Politics

Blaser would face the political hubbub of his first years at SFU—for him, a question of the relationship between poetry and politics—in his own little magazine, Pacific Nation, and the essay “Particles .” Before Blaser and Persky left San Francisco, Blaser had taken on the project of starting a poetry journal to be called Pacific Republic. The idea, Persky recalls, was actually Spicer’s (Persky interview, 14 December 2013). During the Vancouver trip of 1965, Spicer had imagined a nation extending from San Francisco to Vancouver, a community of congenial spirits who had detached themselves from U.S. imperialism. This kind of mythical mapping was an extension of the anarchic localism Spicer practiced in North Beach. The pun on the word “pacific” suggests a critique of the U.S. position in Vietnam and the geographical trope a loose way to imagine an open space for those like-minded enough to find it. In 1965, Persky and Blaser picked up the myth of such a nation. By spring 1966, The Pacific Republic had a letterhead and Olson was among the first to be solicited for material (Blaser to Olson, 16 May 1966). The journal was to be printed by Graham Mackintosh and published under the imprint of Open Space and White Rabbit. In the letter, Blaser writes that “The point is to do something with our real and imagined geography,” and he asks Olson for notes on Carl Sauer’s The Early Spanish Main . Olson responded with encouragement and sent “[to get the rituals straight.” He also steered Blaser toward a name change:Just (in fact) to celebrate—or greet what I have felt ever since getting your letter, with its letterhead ((even though I wish in fact you all had thought to get the same result—and a better future!—by calling it THE PACIFIC NATION! (Olson to Blaser, 21 June 1966)

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