A Long Rope At The Edge Of The Void

“The poet Tadeusz Rozewicz had a vision of a truly democratic society in which poetry was hung from construction sites. If poetry is ever posted on buildings in America, it will be by Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams and Douglas Blazek!” – Victor Contoski

A Long Rope at the Edge of the Void is the seventh title in a long awaited series of books representing the life’s work of Douglas Blazek.

Achieving prominence in his first 25 years, Douglas Blazek was known as an instrumental figure in the sixties literary movement, the Mimeo Revolution: publishing his poems in over 500 journals, authoring several dozen books and chapbooks, and editing the infamous journal Olé, in which formative work by Charles Bukowski and d.a. Levy were published. John Martin of Black Sparrow Press spoke of Olé as “the best and most important of the lot” but added “that Blazek’s own poetry is by far the most important.” This was the moment that Blazek vowed to make poetry dangerous. 

Several years later, reaching what he felt was his limit, Blazek backed away from these accomplishments to write new poetry and painstakingly revise his existing material for the three decades that followed.

After this meticulous thirty year process the series of titles now being published by Edition Muta represents the poet’s complete life’s work.