The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner brings together, for the first time, all of the approximately 3,072 published and unpublished poems composed by Larry Eigner (1927-1996), a prominent American poet of the second half of the twentieth century and one of the principal figures of the influential Black Mountain School. Scrupulously edited by Robert Grenier and Curtis Faville from the extensive archives of Eigner typescripts at the University of Kansas and Stanford University, this monumental, four-volume, 8 1/2 by 11 inch edition sets forth in chronological sequence the story of Eigner's achievement, from his modest beginnings as the boy-author of traditional rhymes to his highly original (and often profoundly moving) constructions made of letters in the space of his typewriter page, which have gained him widespread recognition and placed him in the forefront of the literary avant-garde. For over 40 years, beginning in the early 1950's, Larry Eigner's writing was a wonder and a delight to readers of contemporary poetry, appearing in countless little magazines and in over 75 books and pamphlets. With the publication of The Collected Poems―faithfully reproducing the precise visual and aural relationships envisioned by the author in an equivalently spaced Courier computer font which preserves typewriter spacing―the fact of Eigner's amazing accomplishment can finally be known, appreciated and appraised by a much-better-informed, wider audience. Palsied from hard birth, growing up in a close-knit, nurturing household in Swampscott, Massachusetts, Eigner courageously overcame a series of physical obstacles and limitations to achieve a mastery over the material text, producing his typescripts on his 1940 Royal manual typewriter using only his right index finger and thumb to create shifting constellations of words in space whose musical and visual designs are realized in a language at once immediate and highly abstract. Perhaps the best realization to date of the idea of "composition by field" proposed by Charles Olson in his landmark essay "Projective Verse," The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner is a literary event of the first order.

The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner, Volumes 1-4

Literature & Fiction

Eigner, Larry

Poetry

Stanford University Press

Larry Eigner began writing poetry at age eight and was first published at age nine. Revered by poets and artists across a broad spectrum of generations and schools, Eigner’s remarkably moving poetry was created through enormous effort: because of severe physical disabilities, he produced his texts by typing with only one index finger and thumb on a 1940 Royal manual typewriter, creating a body of work that is unparalleled in its originality. Calligraphy Typewriters showcases the most celebrated of Eigner's several thousand poems, which are an important part of the Black Mountain/Projectivist movement that began in the 1950s and which remain a primary inspiration for many younger writers, including those in the Language movement that began in the 1970s. In its two sections—Swampscott and Berkeley, named for the two locales where Eigner lived and worked—the volume traces his fantastic perception of the ordinary and his zeal for language. Eigner’s use of visual space, metaphor, and description provide fascinating insights into both his own life and the world that surrounded him. This volume maintains the distinctive visual spacing of his original typescripts, reminders of his method, aesthetic sensibility, and creative ability to compose on the typewriter. A collection that reimagines the ordinary, Calligraphy Typewriters is the definitive selection of Eigner’s poems, and will serve well not only poets and students of poetry, but readers and writers of every vein.

Calligraphy Typewriters: The Selected Poems of Larry Eigner (Modern and Contemporary Poetics)

University Alabama Press

Things Stirring Together or Far Away

Black Sparrow Pr

Things stirring together or far away

Black Sparrow Press

In Eigner, the desire to know anchors itself in the discrete particular, recording sense data in an empiricism derived from Williams, Pound, and Olson, then stretches itself by a series of shifts of attention, to create an arching figure for knowledge. The shapes those figures take are products of an insistent, restless movement on the one hand, and on the other a refusal to compromise the harvest of the moment by subordinating it to any totalizing statement. Thus the dialectical movement of the poems is made possible by an openness to embrace the manifest, contingent phenomena of temporal existence and a willingness of mind to release its hold at any point. The truth of the mortality of the subject is thus built into its appropriation of the world. -Kit Robinson

The World and Its Streets, Places

Travel

In Eigner, the desire to know anchors itself in the discrete particular, recording sense data in an empiricism derived from Williams, Pound, and Olson, then stretches itself by a series of shifts of attention, to create an arching figure for knowledge. The shapes those figures take are products of an insistent, restless movement on the one hand, and on the other a refusal to compromise the harvest of the moment by subordinating it to any totalizing statement. Thus the dialectical movement of the poems is made possible by an openness to embrace the manifest, contingent phenomena of temporal existence and a willingness of mind to release its hold at any point. The truth of the mortality of the subject is thus built into its appropriation of the world. -Kit Robinson

The world and its streets, places

Waters, Places, a Time

Waters, places, a time

Larry Eigner is a poet of the 20th Century, who writes in the tradition of William Carlos WIlliams.This particular book of his poetry, Windows/Walls/Yard/Ways collects 322 poems written between 1959 and 1922. The author almost exclusively chose the selections, and the arrangement is largely chronological. About 88 of these poems were written while the author resided in Massachusetts between 1959 and 1978, and the majority of them were written between 1979 and 1992, following the author s move to California. In a note on the text, the collection is categorized as eastern poetry, possibly regarding Massachusetts, the author s long-time home.  There is no writing I know as vivid as Larry Eigner's. He's invented, for poetry, something equivalent to three-dimensional photography: his works present a series of perceptions etched deep into the mind, where the mind is charted on a page and the page becomes a model of the thinking field. Perception and thought (words and things) are completely intertwined in Eigner's work, which brings to a visionary crescendo the exploration of the ordinary -- the transient flickerings of the everyday that otherwise pass more unnoticed than regarded, more dismissed than revered. In Eigner's poems, one "fragment" is riveted to the next, so that one becomes, in reading this work, likewise riveted by the uncanny democracy of details, where attention is focused unhesitatingly on each particular with equal weight, equal exhilaration. This is a poetics of "noticing things," where, as Eigner writes, "nothing is too dull" with "material (things, words) more and more dense around you." But equally, Eigner's is a poetics of coincidence, where "serendipity" (contingency) takes its rightful place as animating spirit, displacing the anthropocentric sentimentality of much of the verse of our time.

Windows/Walls/Yard/Ways

From the publishers website: Larry Eigner is a poet whose spare, dense and impassioned poetry carries on the the tradition of William Carlos Williams. This particular book of his poetry, Windows/Walls/Yard/Ways collects 322 poems written between 1959 and 1922. The author almost exclusively chose the selections, and the arrangement is largely chronological. About 88 of these poems were written while the author resided in Massachusetts between 1959 and 1978, and the majority of them were written between 1979 and 1992, following the author's move to California. In a note on the text, the collection is categorized as 'eastern' poetry, possibly regarding Massachusetts, the author's long-time home. "There is no writing I know as vivid as Larry Eigner's. He's invented, for poetry, something equivalent to three-dimensional photography: his works present a series of perceptions etched deep into the mind, where the mind is charted on a page and the page becomes a model of the thinking field. Perception and thought (words and things) are completely intertwined in Eigner's work, which brings to a visionary crescendo the exploration of the ordinary -- the transient flickerings of the everyday that otherwise pass more unnoticed than regarded, more dismissed than revered. In Eigner's poems, one "fragment" is riveted to the next, so that one becomes, in reading this work, likewise riveted by the uncanny democracy of details, where attention is focused unhesitatingly on each particular with equal weight, equal exhilaration. This is a poetics of "noticing things," where, as Eigner writes, "nothing is too dull" with "material (things, words) more and more dense around you." But equally, Eigner's is a poetics of coincidence, where "serendipity" (contingency) takes its rightful place as animating spirit, displacing the anthropocentric sentimentality of much of the verse of our time."

Windows/Walls/Yard/Ways (Lines Squares Paths Worlds Backwards Sight)

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