Pell Mell, the middle voice, the syntax meeting its astonishments in
its forward stride looking backwards, imagining an image nation where
the heart is always torn--to pieces possessed by the other(s). A book so
sure of itself that Blaser can begin, after the act of said-and-done, a
series called Great Companions. Lesser poets might, and have, called
them "masters." But only because they lack Robin Blaser's insistence on
the audacious ever-present. A scatter of pearls for Aphrodite, and a
lovely place to enter Blaser's life work, The Holy Forest. As to the
plot, Blaser himself has said:
"These poems follow a principle of randonnée --the random and the
given of the hunt, the game, the tour. Thus, randonnée is another
title of this book, written, so to speak, in invisible ink. These poems
are also a further movement in one long work that I call The Holy
Forest, though that need not trouble the reader before the forest is
full grown. Poems called Image-Nations come and go throughout, never
to become a complete nation. And Great Companions of the art of
poetry, a series which begins to gather here with Pindar and Robert
Duncan, will continue until their voices close The Holy Forest. That's
the plot."
