Collected Poems - by Robert Bringhurst (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This spellbinding collection forms an essential document of Robert Bringhurst's long career as one of Canada's most adventurous artists and thinkers.

Over a career of more than half a century, Robert Bringhurst has become widely renowned as a polymath driven by intense curiosity and vast erudition. The American-born, BC-based artist and scholar has brought a background in linguistics, physics, architecture and comparative literature to bear on his groundbreaking work as an essayist, critic, historian, translator, typographer and poet.

Indeed, there is arguably no more powerful testament to Bringhurst's deeply eclectic vision than this captivating collection, offering the full scope of his poetry, from the late '60s to the present day. Here, modernist elements in early works are gradually refined into an approach that bypasses the self-exploration prevalent in contemporary poetry, and instead forms a framework to accommodate influences as historically and culturally diverse as ancient Greek and Chinese verse, the Bible and the stories of West Coast Indigenous Peoples, creating a timeless, borderless interplay. Even Bringhurst's acclaimed contributions to the field of typography--culminating in his now classic 1992 book The Elements of Typographic Style--is represented in the global array of type interspersed here, from Hellenic to Hebrew and Chinese.

With their striking blend of lyric energy, formal daring and precision, the works in this long-awaited collection gather into a kind of career-spanning dialogue, reflecting one of Canada's most remarkable creative minds.

Review Quotes

"This book is a craggy challenge, and an indispensable gift. These are poems we need."
--Dennis Lee, Canadian poet and critic

Praise for Robert Bringhurst:

"Bringhurst's achievement is gigantic, as well as heroic."
--Margaret Atwood, The Times (London)

"Bringhurst is often referred to as a Renaissance man. [He] takes plain English and bends and shapes it like a musician, creating an original verse that cannot be classified but reads splendidly and is not aiming at pleasing anybody. He is a solitary artist and thinker who's in touch with almost everything."
--Gary Snyder

"Bringhurst comes to us like night lightning: the dark is suddenly lit by language beautifully crafted and by riveting thought. He writes for the eye, the ear, and the mind all at once, and he doesn't waste a sentence."
--Barry Lopez

"He is without a doubt a major poet, not only in the context of Canadian letters, but in that of all writing of our time."
--Robin Skelton