Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the Book Machine, the Collected Research Reports of the Toronto Research Group, 1973-1982

by Steve McCaffery (Editor), bpNichol

The Toronto Research Group was an eighteen year collaboration and friendship between the late bpNichol and Steve McCaffery.

In addition to reports on translation; the book-as-machine; and the search for non-narrative prose; this collection includes an informative introduction by McCaffery; a new report on performance; �Reading and Writing: The Toronto Research Game’; and much hitherto unpublished material. From scholasticism to pop-up books, the Book of Nature to comic strips, these frequently witty, often irreverent and methodically mischievious reports document a vital era, not only in the intellectual growth of two individuals, but in the history of critical collaboration in North America.

With a revised format, additional bibliography and profuse illustrations, this book will prove to be of inestimable value to anyone tracing the poetic archeology of the seventies in Anglophone Canada.

Genres: Art

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Steve McCaffery is the author of over twenty-five books of poetry and criticism. He has twice been awarded the Gertrude Stein Award for innovative poetry and twice shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. His poems have been published in more than a dozen countries. A long-time resident of Toronto, he is currently the David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, University at Buffalo.

Reviews

[Evan Pincus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frequently irritatingly academic and overwrought in its language and tone - who does McCaffery think he is ridiculing theorists who discuss “the metaesthetics of a closed post-linear philosophy” or whatever when he himself by his own admission is that exact kind of writer? - but just as often a delightful portrait of years of friendship that ended up manifesting as literary criticism. Good if deeply shaggy essays within on the possible meanings of “translation,” formal experimentation in kidlit and criticism/canon-building as a deeply personal act, but the most rewarding part is simply getting to see these two minds bounce off of each other, whether they’re correcting each other in footnotes or errata, bickering with each other in photo-comic form or plotting elaborate conceptual slapstick with matching shirts where one says POST and the other says MODERN. The bibliography isn’t even a works cited, it’s just a list of books they read together… ywn have a partner in crime like that, why even bother?