Cid Corman's of, Volumes 4 & 5, Discussed at Jacket2

We'd be remiss not to make mention of this interview at Jacket2 (concerning Cid Corman's of, volumes 4 & 5) between Bob Arnold (Corman's literary executor and editor of of) and Gregory Dunne. As you likely know already, Corman's little magazine Origin was one of the first publications to see key figures of the New American Poets into print, particularly Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, while Corman also helped to bring the poetry of Lorine Niedecker out of obscurity late in her life. Corman, of course, was a poetic force in his own right. Arnold and Dunne discuss how the publication of the final two volumes of of display Corman's particular mastery. We'll start with the matter of size, as Arnold notes these final volumes constitute a big book:

Arnold: The first three volumes came in at approximately 750 pages each. I edited and designed volumes 4 and 5 (the final work) into one book at a little under 850 pages. If we could have afforded to, we would have also seen two volumes at 750 pages. Two books for each volume seemed unnecessary and extravagant in these times of an unpredictable readership, storage, expense, and we liked the idea of two books socked together. It holds.

The two go on to discuss what the final volumes mean in Corman's oeuvre:

Arnold: Cid has the delight ready for the reader and it comes through as sunlight past the curtains in the Valery quote he uses: “The diamond of sincerity.” This is the hallmark of the last two volumes — sincerity — and Cid steers this imaginative machine by way of a ton of other authors’ works and translations that all come unaccounted for — at great gripes from his critics — watching Cid sculpt and form and pay homage to the many Grand Works he borrows from and in this case frames into poems of his making, so we receive a tremendous anthology of works, all as poetry, mined with his own poems. A Corman Reader. Every sized poem imaginable. He’s doing as he pleases, and he’s pleasing. Again, it is all one. The poet here is showing us his education, and it’s vast: from the cinema, baseball, sumo, literature, television, the street, media, politics, history, philosophy, psychology, other poets left and right of him, music, utterings, animal life, mystical life, no life, noh. You had best be ready. In these last two volumes there is a porthole to an animated and spirited world, much like the ancient sutras, which this transplanted soul of the Far East was well acquainted with. As in the ancient sutra caves where one shouldn’t focus on individual murals and isolated creations only, it’s all the same in Cid’s case, where one must see the entire body of pictures and poems, translations, private readings, borrowings, and all the homages (prayers) — this visual mapping of the Corman world. This is the seasoned and maturing and in fact true living/dying (Cid will pass) history and backbone of the Corman imagination. Instead of pouring everything right out of the gate in of volumes 1 and 2, we now see that we have a woodworker knowing his tree, his wood, grain, and tools, and he has always planned to build a ship, stem to stern.

Much more ground is covered in the conversation and you'll want to read all of it at Jacket2.