{"id":54,"date":"2011-05-11T02:28:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T09:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/?page_id=54"},"modified":"2023-07-04T01:45:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-04T08:45:21","slug":"robert-bringhurst","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/poets\/robert-bringhurst\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Bringhurst"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/WildLanguage.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/WildLanguage.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-685\" width=\"174\" height=\"277\"\/><\/a><figcaption><strong><em>Wild Language<\/em> by Robert Bringhurst (2006)<\/strong><br>48 pp, 4 \u00bd x 7 inches <br>ISBN 978-1-896886-08-4<br><a href=\"https:\/\/campus-store.viu.ca\/shop_product_detail.asp?catalog_id=85&amp;catalog_name=VGhlIEd1c3RhZnNvbiBQb2V0cnkgU2VyaWVz&amp;pf_id=1643&amp;product_name=V2lsZCBMYW5ndWFnZQ&amp;type=3&amp;target=shop_product_list.asp\">BUY<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In\u00a0<em>Wild Language<\/em>, Robert Bringhurst twinned senses of ecology and of society want us to take language (and to be taken by language) somewhere new, somewhere wild. He says, \u201cThe wild is real, and the real is where we go for form and meaning. Meaning doesn\u2019t originate within us. When we are actually speaking, what we say has form and meaning, and those, at root, are not man-made.\u201d He itemizes many of the characteristics of wildness as its advocate: it is coexistive with time, simultaneously ancient and new, stable and ever-changing, rich, varied, extensive, complex, intertwined, beautiful, delicate, fragile, adaptable, strong, intelligent, attentive, responsive. \u201cThe wild remembers its past and dreams its future and speaks its immediate present.\u201d<br><br><em>\u201cIs language always a domesticated creature, or is it, or can it be, wild? And if so, in what sense? To answer that, we\u2019ll have to know what <\/em>wild<em> means. We use the word in different ways, the historical baggage of accumulated viewpoints. Some people use it to mean undisciplined, unpredictable, savage, frightening, fierce, raw, crude\u2014 connotations that seem to stem from viewing the world as a great and intimidating unknown, or as a resource that humans are entitled and obliged to tame and tap. \u2026In my own dialect of English, <\/em>wild <em>doesn\u2019t have those implications. It means undomesticated, unmanaged, uncontrolled by human beings\u2014but it rests on the assumption that there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. More loosely, in my dialect of English, it\u2019s a term of approbation. \u2018That\u2019s wild!\u2019 means \u2018that\u2019s exciting; that stretches my sense of what-is.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u2026. It appears to me that what&nbsp;<\/em>wild<em>&nbsp;actually means is the opposite of undisciplined and crude. It means&nbsp;<\/em>extremely sophisticated<em>. It means capable of living under the most demanding conditions, with minimal tools and housing and clothing. It means self-sufficient in a high degree, and yet part of the fabric, a full working member of the ecology. Could language live up to that standard? Survive at that level? If so, what kind of language would it be? Poetry maybe? I don\u2019t mean polite, Neoclassical verse, or florid Romantic verse either, but how about poetry?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-medium\"><a href=\"https:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Bringhurstheadshot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"262\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Bringhurstheadshot-262x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-686\" srcset=\"https:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Bringhurstheadshot-262x300.jpg 262w, https:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Bringhurstheadshot.jpg 523w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 262px) 100vw, 262px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert Bringhurst<\/strong>\u00a0is a poet, cultural historian, typographer, translator, and linguist who studied linguistics, comparative literature at MIT, Indiana and Utah universities, as well as UBC. He has worked for many years with Native American texts and is the author of\u00a0<em>Story as Sharp as a Knife<\/em>, Volume 1 of the trilogy: Masterworks of the Classical Haida. He also translated\u00a0<em>Nine Visits to the Mythworld f<\/em>rom Haida. Bringhurst\u2019s <em>The Elements of Typographic Style is<\/em> one a bible of typography and book design, translated into 10 languages in its third edition. He has won the Lieutenant Governor\u2019s Award and the Wytter Bynner Fellowship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bringhurst is the author of\u00a0the following works of poetry: <em>Going Down Singing, Stopping B,\u00a0 New World Suite Number Three, Ursa Major, The Book of Silences, Elements<\/em>,<em>The Calling, Conversations with a Toad; Pieces of Map, Pieces of Music, The Blue Roofs of Japan, Tending the Fire; The Beauty of the Weapons; Tzuhalem&#8217;s Mountain, Bergschrund; Eight Objects; Deuteronomy; Cadastre; <\/em>and<em> The Shipwright&#8217;s Log. <\/em>His prose includes: <em>Palatino, What Is Reading For?, The Surface of Meaning, Everywhere Being is Dancing, The Tree of Meaning, The Solid Form of Language<\/em>, <em>A Short History of the Printed Word, Native American Oral Literatures and the Unity of the Humanities, Boats Is Saintlier Than Captains; The Black Canoe; Shovels, Shoes and the Slow Rotation of Letters; The Raven Steals the Light; <\/em>and<em> Ocean\/Paper\/Stone.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read <a href=\"https:\/\/issuu.com\/viuportalmagazine\/docs\/2004\/8\">an interview with Robert Bringhurst<\/a> in <em>Portal<\/em> 2004 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In\u00a0Wild Language, Robert Bringhurst twinned senses of ecology and of society want us to take language (and to be taken by language) somewhere new, somewhere wild. He says, \u201cThe wild is real, and the real is where we go for form and meaning. Meaning doesn\u2019t originate within us. When we are actually speaking, what we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":667,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-54","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Robert Bringhurst - Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poets Series<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/portalmagazine.ca\/gustafson\/poets\/robert-bringhurst\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Robert Bringhurst - Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poets Series\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In\u00a0Wild Language, Robert Bringhurst twinned senses of ecology and of society want us to take language (and to be taken by language) somewhere new, somewhere wild. 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