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Poetry’s 49th Parallel: Canadian/American Shibboleths
Is this a Canadian poet? Is this Canadian poetry? I photo-shopped the above image of myself because I’ve never taken such a staged picture of myself. And I’ve never really experienced an...
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Eric Cheyfitz: the “grand hallucination that we are talking with others”
“Those of us who live within the privilege of Western patriarchy live in an increasingly narrow psychic and social space. For we cannot afford to enter most of the social spaces of the world; they...
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Robert Zend (1929-1985): Poet without Borders – Preface with Portraits
Preface with Portraits Click to view slideshow. All images of work by Robert Zend are copyright © Janine Zend, all rights reserved, reproduced with permission from Janine Zend. Family photographs are...
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Robert Zend – Part 2. Dissolving Labels and Boundaries
Part 2. Dissolving Labels and Boundaries Being a poet does not depend on the geographical location of the poet’s body, or on the political system under which the publisher functions, but on the...
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Robert Zend – Part 3. Hungary: Childhood and Early Adulthood
Part 3. Hungary: Childhood and Early Adulthood Little has been publicly known about Robert Zend’s early years in Hungary, prior to the 1956 Uprising and his subsequent immigration to Canada....
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Robert Zend – Part 5. Hungarian Literary Roots: The Budapest Joke and Other...
Part 5. Hungarian Literary Roots: The Budapest Joke and Other Influences If we look at Zend’s oeuvre only in a Canadian context, we miss out on the rich cultural heritage in Hungary that...
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Robert Zend – Part 6. Canadian Literary Cross-Pollination: Marshall McLuhan
Part 6. Canadian Literary Cross-Pollination: Marshall McLuhan (1911—1980) Introduction: Multiculturalism before Multiculturalism In the last installment, “Hungarian Literary Roots,” I traced...
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Robert Zend – Part 7. Canadian Literary Cross-Pollination: bpNichol
Part 7. Canadian Literary Cross-Pollination: bpNichol, The Four Horsemen, and Jiri Ladocha In the last installment, I began my exploration of Robert Zend’s affinities with Canadian cultural...
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Robert Zend – Part 8. Canadian Literary Cross-Pollination: The Three Roberts,...
Part 8. Canadian Literary Cross-Pollination: The Three Roberts, Norman McLaren, and Glenn Gould Robert Zend the Nomad...
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Robert Zend – Part 10. International Affinities: France (Marcel Marceau)
Part 10. International Affinities: France (Marcel Marceau) L’Art du Silence and the Language of Empathy In 1955, French mime artist Marcel Marceau made his historic North American debut,...
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Robert Zend – Part 11. International Affinities: Italy (Leopardi and Pirandello)
Part 11. International Affinities: Italy (Leopardi and Pirandello) Melancholy and Masks Zend’s father laid the foundation for his son’s cosmopolitan outlook by traveling with the boy in...
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Robert Zend – Part 12. International Affinities: Belgium (Magritte) and Japan
Part 12. International Affinities: Belgium (Magritte) and Japan Robert Zend’s international openness was remarkable, especially during a time when a broad tendency in Canadian culture was to...
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Robert Zend – Afterword: Citizen of the Macrocosm
Afterword: Citizen of the Macrocosm Robert Zend admired Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy for his unwillingness “to accept any label, either for himself or for others”: He didn’t identify...
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