The Recovery of the Public World: Essays on Poetics in Honour of Robin Blaser ed. by Charles Watts, Edward Byrne (review)

316 letters in canada 1999 author's training in literary studies is always evident in his close reading of individual poems and his exegesis reveals very convincingly the syncretism that leads to a complex vision. Granted that a study of the bhakti movement is too vast to be dealt with comprehensively in a work of this length, one would still have liked a more thorough analysis of some of the major South Indian poets who wrote during the three centuries starting from 600 CE, Mishra draws attention to the Alvar poets but fails to examine closely the wonderful lyricism of a whole range of poets. And had he spent more time discussing the South, he could have analysed the various traditions, both religious and literary, and even the political that underscored the multilayered religious poetry of the major poets of this time. A fuller treatment of how the metrical patterns and conventions of Sangam poetry got transformed in the hands of the bhakti poets would have strengthened his argument considerably. Equally fascinating would be an analysis of the subtle differences between the Saivaite and the Vaishnavite poets of the South. (CHELVA KANAGANAYAKAM) Charles Watts and Edward Byrne, editors. The Recovery of the Public World: Essays on Poetics in Honour of Robin Blaser Talon. 464. $29.95 In 1995, Charles Watts, along with Edward Byrne and many others, organized `The Recovery of the Public World: A Conference and Festival in Honour of the Poetry and Poetics of Robin Blaser' in Vancouver. Partly it lived up to its title by the way the many participants from Canada, the United States, and other parts of the English-speaking world conjoined to create a truly public space for connecting discourses, a community, that is, that promoted the values of community against forces of privatization in a world dominated by multinational companies and the exclusionary politics of the far Right. Now, in the volume coedited by the late Charles Watts and Edward Byrne, many of the contributors to that conference essay theory, poetics, criticism, and political critique that take a stand for precisely the public world Blaser's writing, teaching, and life have always honoured. I would agree with Michael Ondaatje that Blaser is, for many Canadians, `still more a rumour than a presence,' and I would like to believe that this volume will go some way to rectifying this situation. The table of contents is basically a list of some of the most interesting and important writers and critics associated with the New American Poetry, the various kinds of poetry that have emerged around the world in response to the poetry associated with the anthology of that title, and some fascinating political thinkers. Many of the essays are intriguingly personal critical responses to aspects of Blaser's work, which had finally been humanities 317 collected two years prior to the conference in The Holy Forest, one of the major life-works of our time. To name even just the contributors who simply offered such needed criticism of Blaser's work would take up most of the space allowed for this review. They include Charles Bernstein, Pauline Butling, Peter Quartermain, Daphne Marlatt, Michelle Leggott, Nathaniel Tarn, Susan Howe, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Phyllis Webb. Part 1, titled `Companions,' includes many essays on Blaser's work, while part 2, `Translation,' takes up what Pierre Joris has announced as a (re)new(ed) nomadic poetics that rhizomatically crisscrosses languages in the wake of modernism's expressive utilization of collage. Part 3,`Heterologies,' includes essays offering criticism of Blaser's work, while others take off from that work to explore other writers and their work or the very ideas that provoke such writing. The final section, `The Outside,' turns much more specifically to the larger questions of how poetry might engage the public world, and whether or not it even can. These include some exacting and exciting essays that actually think through the implications of recent political developments in a world where any profundity of concern is attacked wherever it appears. In these essays, the writers take up such important mentors to Blaser and others since as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Giorgio Agamben. In his remarks to...