Selected Organs: Parts of an Autobiography

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Selected Organs: Parts of an Autobiography

by bpNichol

4.14 of 5 stars 4.14 · rating details · 7 ratings · 1 review

Hardcover, 53 pages

Published by Black Moss Press

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-11 of 11)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Feb 21, 2010 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read selections from this back in undergrad and I've been trying to get a hold of the whole book ever since. This book is my apparently stupidly rare. So glad that my university library had it! It's an interesting way to go about an autobiography and I love the fragmented writing style. Just love it.

like · see review

May 16, 2013 Fatima marked it as to-read

Feb 08, 2013 Athena Genevieve marked it as to-read

Shelves: wishlist

Jan 13, 2013 Jasmine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nov 27, 2012 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nov 16, 2012 Caro rated it 2 of 5 stars

Oct 16, 2012 Domenico Capilongo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sep 10, 2012 Joel marked it as to-read

Mar 16, 2012 Haley marked it as to-read

Aug 16, 2011 Stuart rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: canuckpo

Aug 13, 2011 Nicholas rated it 4 of 5 stars

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

Popular Shelves

to-read

4 shelves

canuckpo

1 shelf

About bpNichol

bpNichol (Barrie Phillip Nichol) was born September 30, 1944 in Vancouver, British Columbia. His writing is, by definition, engaged with what he called “borderblur”: in his lifetime he wrote (somewhere between) poetry, novels, short fiction, children’s books, musical scores, comic book art, collage/assemblage, and computer texts. Nichol was also an inveterate collaborator, working with the sound p...more bpNichol (Barrie Phillip Nichol) was born September 30, 1944 in Vancouver, British Columbia. His writing is, by definition, engaged with what he called “borderblur”: in his lifetime he wrote (somewhere between) poetry, novels, short fiction, children’s books, musical scores, comic book art, collage/assemblage, and computer texts. Nichol was also an inveterate collaborator, working with the sound poetry ensemble The Four Horsemen (whose members were Nichol, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, and Steve McCaffery); Steve McCaffery as part of the Toronto Research Group (TRG); the visual artist Barbara Caruso; and countless other writers. In the mid 1980s bpNichol became a successful writer for the children’s television show Fraggle Rock, produced by Jim Henson. His early work in sound was documented in Michael Ondaatje's film Sons of Captain Poetry. A second film has been made on Nichol, bp: pushing the boundaries, directed by Brian Nash; he also appears in Ron Mann’s film Poetry in Motion. bpNichol died in Toronto, Ontario on September 25, 1988.

While his initial attempts at writing in the early 1960s produced fiction and lyric poetry, Nichol first garnered international attention in the late 1960s with his hand-drawn concrete and visual poems—poems in which he brilliantly works against the conventions of the traditional lyric poem by exploring the material, tangible, and aural qualities of the word and the letter. (Not surprisingly his work with the aural qualities of language soon led him to sound poetry, resulting in the release of four solo audio recordings.) Nichol’s first major collection of concrete poetry, Konfessions of an Elizbethan Fan Dancer, marked the beginning of a long engagement with the typewriter and its unique ability to mechanically reproduce letters an exact distance apart; in other words, the grid-like qualities of typewritten text allowed him to create meaning semantically and visually, horizontally and vertically. Soon after, Nichol published typewriter concrete in the boxed bp and in the 1970 Governor General’s Award-winning collection of loose poems Still Water. While his concrete poems illustrate an astonishing range of techniques and concerns, other early works such as ABC: the aleph beth book and aleph unit point to his lifelong interest in representing processuality by gradually transforming series of letter-shapes.

Exemplifying the dictum spelled out in his “Statement” printed on the back of bp, “there are no barriers in art,” the prose booklet The true eventual story of Billy the Kid, the collection of lyric poems Beach Head, along with the anthology of concrete poetry The Cosmic Chef, also won the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1970. In fact, it was partly through his work with concrete poetry (take for example the tale that is indirectly told through the concrete narrative of Extreme Positions) that Nichol discovered innovative ways to work with narrative, ways that were often hilarious reworkings, re-mixings, of narrative conventions for genres ranging from the novel to the western, the detective story, the romance novel, the journal entry, and the autobiography. The result: the deconstructive metafiction of The true eventual story of Billy the Kid; the collage of romance novel, personal and historical letters, poetry, prose poetry, and cartoons that is Two Novels; the stream-of-consciousness of Journal; the autobiographical accounts of Nichol’s vagina, tonsils, lungs etc. in Selected Organs; and so on.

Nichol continued to subvert formal and thematic conventions in his shorter poems and sequences—effortlessly moving between genres, blurring and experimenting with generic boundaries to produce writing as varied as the minimalist lyricism of The Other Side of the Room; the pun-filled, semantically complex Journeying & The Returns; the translations of translations of Apollinaire in Translating Translating Apollinaire.

While the series of books tha(less)

More about bpNichol...

Books by bpNichol

Zygal: A Book of Mysteries and Translations

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Selected Organs: ...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

title link	preview: Selected Organs: Parts of an Autobiography
avg rating	preview: Selected Organs: Parts of an Autobiography Goodreads rating: 4.14 (7 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1914595.Selected_Organs?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1313338051l/1914595.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1914595.Selected_Organs?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Selected Organs: Parts of an Autobiography by bpNichol[/url]