Paul Blackburn (U.S. poet)
Encyclopedia
Paul Blackburn was an American poet. He influenced contemporary literature through his poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, translations and the encouragement and support he offered to fellow poets.

Biography

Blackburn was born in St. Albans, Vermont
St. Albans (city), Vermont
St. Albans is a city in and the shire town of Franklin County, Vermont, in the United States. At the 2000 census, the city population was 7,650. St Albans City is completely surrounded by St. Albans town, which is incorporated separately from the city of St. Albans...

. His parents, William Gordon Blackburn and Frances Frost
Frances Frost
Frances Frost was an American poet, novelist and mother of poet Paul Blackburn.-Life:...

 (also a poet, novelist and author of children's books) separated when Blackburn was three and a half. Thereafter, he was cared for primarily by his maternal grandparents on their farm in St. Albans until he was fourteen, when his mother took him to New York City to live with her in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...

. He began writing poetry in his late teens under her encouragement.

Shortly after enrolling in New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 in 1945, Blackburn joined the army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

 hoping to be sent overseas. The war ended soon after however, and he spent the rest of his service as a laboratory technician in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

. In 1947 he returned to NYU, transferring in 1949 to the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

, and graduating in 1950.

It was during these college years that Blackburn first became influenced by Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, and began corresponding with him while at the University of Wisconsin. He hitchhiked to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 several times to visit him at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Through Pound, he came into contact with Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

, which led to links with Cid Corman
Cid Corman
Cid Corman was an American poet, translator and editor, most notably of Origin, who was a key figure in the history of American poetry in the second half of the 20th century.-Early life and writing:...

, Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov
-Early life and influences:Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Essex.Couzyn, Jeni Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe, p74 Her mother, Beatrice Spooner-Jones Levertoff, came from a small mining village in North Wales...

, Charles Olson
Charles Olson
Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...

, Joel Oppenheimer
Joel Oppenheimer
Joel Lester Oppenheimer was an American poet associated with both the Black Mountain poets and the New York School. He was the first director of the St. Marks Poetry Project...

 and Jonathan Williams
Jonathan Williams (poet)
Jonathan Williams was an American poet, publisher, essayist, and photographer. He is known as the founder of The Jargon Society, which has published poetry, experimental fiction, photography, and folk art for more than fifty years...

. Through Creeley came an ancillary involvement with the first two issues of Creeley's magazine, Black Mountain Review, which resulted in the occasional inclusion of Blackburn in the Black Mountain
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...

 school of poets. The introduction to the Collected Poems states, "Blackburn always opposed the division of poets into schools and did not like the role of Black Mountain poet into which he was cast by Donald Allen
Donald Allen
Donald Merriam Allen , influential editor, publisher, and translator of contemporary American literature. He is perhaps best known for his project The New American Poetry 1945-1960 , among the several important anthologies of contemporary American innovative writing he made available to the public...

's anthology The New American Poetry (1960). He embraced all types of poetry, citing the value of 'all work, if you work 'em right.'" (E. Jarolim in The Collected Poems Of Paul Blackburn, 1985).

It was also Pound who pointed Blackburn in the direction of Provençal poetry, and he studied the languages of Provence while at the University of Wisconsin. His work on Provençal translations intensified following the 1953 publication of a slim selection of the poems from Divers Press, and the awarding the following year of a Fulbright Fellowship to study Provençal language and literature in France. He continued translating Provençal poetry for the rest of his life. It wasn’t until after his death that the work was fully published.

Blackburn was also well-known for his translations from Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 of the medieval epic Poema del Mio Cid
Cantar de Mio Cid
El Cantar de Myo Çid , also known in English as The Lay of the Cid and The Poem of the Cid is the oldest preserved Spanish epic poem...

, of poetry by Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...

, Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

, and Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, and of the short stories of Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar
Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

. He was for a time Cortázar's literary agent in the United States.

Blackburn played an important part in the poetry community, particularly in New York, where he helped fledgling poets develop. He provided logistical and emotional support for writers coming to the city and opportunities to read for both unknown and established writers in the various reading series with which he was involved. He organized readings that offered work from the Beats
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

, the New York School
New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...

, the Deep Image
Deep image
Deep image is a term coined by U.S. poets Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Kelly in the second issue of Trobar in 1961. They used it to describe poetry written by them and by Diane Wakoski and Clayton Eshleman....

 Poets, and the Black Mountain Poets
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...

. Clayton Eshleman
Clayton Eshleman
Clayton Eshleman is an American poet, translator, and editor.-Life:Eshleman has been translating since the early 1960s. He is the recipient of the National Book Award in 1979 for his co-translation of César Vallejo's Complete Posthumous Poetry...

 has written, "Many, not just a few, but many poets alive today are beholden to him for a basic artistic kindness, for readings, yes, and for advice, but more humanly for a kind of comradeship that very few poets are willing to give." The readings he organized were the direct progenitors to the St. Mark's Poetry Project
St. Mark's Poetry Project
The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church was founded in 1966 in the East Village of Manhattan by the poet and translator Paul Blackburn, it has been a crucial venue for new and experimental poetries for over four decades....

 on the Bowery (see external link below). Additionally, Blackburn's commitment to recording readings that he organized and attended produced the most comprehensive oral history of the New York poetry scene between the late 1950s and 1970.

Until the mid-1960s Blackburn supported himself through various print-shop, editorial and translating jobs, including a short stint as poetry editor of The Nation. Some of his early jobs included working in-house on encyclopedias and writing free-lance reviews. In the mid-60s he had a show on WBAI
WBAI
WBAI, a part of the Pacifica Radio Network, is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station, broadcasting at 99.5 FM in New York City.Its programming is leftist/progressive, and a mixture of political news and opinion from a leftist perspective, tinged with aspects of its complex and varied...

 with interviews of and readings by poets. He began receiving offers of teaching positions, and in 1965, 1966 and 1967 he directed workshops at the Aspen Writers' Conference. He was Poet-In-Residence at City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 in 1966-67. A Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 in 1967 enabled him to return to Europe to work on his translations and poetry. Upon returning to the U.S. he supported himself through reading tours and teaching at the New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...

 and the State University of New York
State University of New York
The State University of New York, abbreviated SUNY , is a system of public institutions of higher education in New York, United States. It is the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States, with a total enrollment of 465,000 students, plus...

 at Cortland
Cortland, New York
Cortland is a city in Cortland County, New York, USA. As of the 2000 census, the city had a population of 18,740. It is the county seat of Cortland County.The City of Cortland, near the west border of the county, is surrounded by the Town of Cortlandville....

.

Blackburn was married three times: to Winifred Grey McCarthy from 1954 to 1958; Sara Golden from 1963 to 1967; and Joan Diane Miller in 1968, with whom he had a son, Carlos T., in 1969.

Paul Blackburn died of esophageal cancer
Esophageal cancer
Esophageal cancer is malignancy of the esophagus. There are various subtypes, primarily squamous cell cancer and adenocarcinoma . Squamous cell cancer arises from the cells that line the upper part of the esophagus...

 in Cortland, New York, September 1971.

Though Blackburn never set out to fully articulate his poetics, a good summation is the 1954 piece Statement.

In his lifetime Blackburn published thirteen books of original poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, as well as five major works of translation. Twelve other books were published posthumously.

His papers are held at University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...

.

Translations

  • Proensa (1953)
  • Poem of the Cid
    Cid
    Cid may refer to:* Cid , a series of fictional characters in the Final Fantasy series of computer role-playing games* Cid Corman, a poet* Cid, a slang term for Lysergic acid diethylamide...

    (1966, reprinted 1998 ISBN 0806130229)
  • End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
    Julio Cortázar
    Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

     (1967) (ISBN 0060906375)
  • Hunk of Skin by Pablo Picasso
    Pablo Picasso
    Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

     (1968)
  • Cronopios and Famas by Julio Cortázar
    Julio Cortázar
    Julio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...

     (1969; 1999) (ISBN 0811214028)
  • The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz
    Octavio Paz
    Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

     1957-1987 (contributor) (1991) (ISBN 9780811211734)

Works published posthumously

  • Early Selected Y Mas: Poems 1949-1966 (1972) (ISBN 0876851200)
  • Peire Vidal (1972) (ISBN 0913142018)
  • Halfway Down the Coast (1975) (ISBN 0913142093)
  • The Journals (1977)(ISBN 0876852398)
  • By Ear (1978)
  • Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry (1978) (ISBN 0520029852)
  • Lorca/Blackburn: Poems of Federico García Lorca
    Federico García Lorca
    Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...

     Chosen by Paul Blackburn
    (1979, Momo's Press; reprinted 2000, Stop Press)
  • Against the Silences (1980) (ISBN 0905258061)
  • The Selection of Heaven (1980)
  • The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn (1985) (ISBN 0892550864)
  • The Parallel Voyages (1987) (ISBN 0933313020)
  • The Selected Poems (1989) (ISBN 0892551232)

External links

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