Blaser's first lecture starts with introductory remarks by Robert Creeley before Blaser makes his own preliminary comments. He starts in earnest discussing "poetry and positivisms," reading Olson's poetry, and the work of Lucretius before switching his topic to "silence, the word, and the sacred," which is cut off by the tape being flipped. In the first lecture's second half Blaser starts with god and human nature and the question of violence before turning to "the fragility of goodness" and the search for the poetic before concluding with discussion of Hölderlin and Broch.
The second lecture starts off with "the 'no thing'" before its first half continues with "relations to words" and "moving forward." Blaser reflects upon the lecture up to that point to reach the midpoint. He begins again by talking about his own past and cosmology, along with the work of Robert Duncan, Ernst Kantorowicz, and Hannah Arendt, concluding with "the theological metaphysical past.
Blaser's final lecture starts with a reading from "The Death of Virgil," before moving on to examples of positivisms and discussion of Mallarmé (including "Mallarmé's problem") before wondering "what shall we do now?" The lecture's second half starts with the topic of Olson and myth, inlcuding passages from the poet and their comparison to Talmudic texts. He then shifts gears to talk about Spangler on god and music, along with Bach's Passacaglia, before bringing the discussion "from Bach to Olson" to close.
Blaser's Olson Lectures visit to Buffalo concluded with a poetry reading on March 29th, which has also been segmented. Running nearly an hour, his set includes the poems "Further," "The Pause," "Romance," "Gathering," "Robert Graves: In Memoriam," and "To Whom It May Concern." To listen to any of the aforementioned recordings, click here.
