Poetry by Cid Corman

January 1, 1987 • 6 x 9 • 144 pages • 978-0-918273-34-5

About the Author

In addition to his poetry, including And the Word published by Coffee House Press, Cid Corman has made major contributions to American letters through his poetry radio show in the late 40s and early 50s, through his translations of German and Japanese writers, and through Origin Magazine and Origin Press. As one of the first publishers of Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, William Bronk, Larry Eigner, and others, and as a poet and essayist, Corman was an active participant in the international literary community.

Reviews

“To read Corman is to become conscious of one’s breathing, how slightly it separates us from things like stones. The purest language, in minimal lines like those of Williams or Creeley, makes one think of other arts in their purity: a clean tone of harpsichord of music, or flute, or lute, or Matisse colors, or sumi painting or the Zen archer, shooting well.” —Alicia Ostriker, Partisan Review

“Cid Corman’s characteristic poem of the last 10 years (roughly the period since he went to live in Japan) has a somewhat Oriental look about it: brief lines, measured by syllabic count, with much interplay of tones and accents usually turning on a point of acute perception. But don’t mistake it for the schmaltz that passes as Orientalism in most American translations and imitations. Corman came from New England originally, he lived in Europe for some years before moving to Japan, and I detect in his work a Yankee toughness and existential lucidity that raise it far above trivia. . . . Corman’s questions speak what whole libraries have debated about contemporary experience. And they show his method very well—conflict, balance, compression.” —Hayden Carruth, New York Times Book Review