The Robert Zend Website
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      • Interview with Natalie Zend
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      • "Remembering Zend," by Kevin Burns
      • Tom Gallant remembers Zend
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    • OAB: The Magnum Opus
    • From Zero to One
    • Beyond Labels
    • Daymares
    • Nicolette
    • Arbormundi
    • My Friend Jeronimo
    • The Three Roberts
    • Versek, Kepversek
    • Hazam Torve Kettovel
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    • TYPE SCAPES: A Mystery Story
    • A Bouquet to Bip
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Beyond Labels

Translated with John Robert Colombo
Toronto: Hounslow Press, 1982


Robert Zend is unquestionably Canada's most musical poet.
- Glenn Gould, celebrated Canadian pianist

Canada and poetry have cause to be thankful. Zend IS. Zend is HERE.
- Adele Wiseman, Canadian author

out of print. Help get it republished!

Download Beyond Labels:

beyond_labels.pdf
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[Zend's] poems display a ready wit and frequent flights of fancy. In Beyond Labels the poet shows more formal ingenuity and invention [than in From Zero to One], especially with his "Ditto poems" and "Drop poems," which are reminiscent of concrete poetry. This book also includes the poet's address to Amnesty International, which discusses the destructive compulsion people feel to label others.
- John Robert Colombo, in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Toronto, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 842

Praise for Beyond Labels:

Very sincere and moving poems.
- Rafael Alberti (major Spanish poet of the 20th century)
I love your poems, especially those which you dedicate to me.
- Isaac Asimov (American master of science fiction)
y'r a marvlus word tamer miracle, wundrer uv.
- bill bissett (Canadian poet)
Knowing your poems I understand why you like mine.
- Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine writer, essayist and poet)
Robert Zend is a one-man literary renaissance.
- John Robert Colombo (Canadian author, editor and poet)
Zend does't write poetry; he breathes it.
- Lawrence Day (Canadian international chess master, author and journalist)
I can't understand why his poems are not translated into twenty-seven languages of the world!
- Tom Gallant (Canadian writer, playwright, songwriter and actor)
You are my friend because you are a Hungarian and a poet.
- Robert Graves (English poet, scholar and novelist)
Zend is so funny that we must take him seriously.
- Arlene Lampert (Canadian poet and editor)
Zend is a citizen of the universe.
- Jon Lomberg (American space artist and science journalist)
Zend is a great poet. He is my chosen brother.
- Marcel Marceau (internationally acclaimed French mime)
The answer to every reader's quest--the Living Zend.
- bp Nichol (Canadian poet, performer and publisher)
What a mind!
- Joyce Carol Oates (bestselling American author)
Wow!
- P.K. Page (Canadian author and artist, Companion of the Order of Canada)
Zend is a split-personality and I love him both.
- William Ronald (Canadian painter)
Zend's poetry is whimsical, rare and much needed on this continent. His double-edged humour, like a splash of cold water in the face, wakes you up and it has a wonderful aftertaste.
- Aiko Suzuki (Canadian fibre artist)
I had a very pleasant afternoon while reading your poems.
- Margaret Trudeau (author, actor, former wife of Pierre Trudeau, 15th prime minister of Canada)
Robert Zend's feet are planted in the ground, his heart is forgiving, his head is in the clouds.
- Immanuel Velikovsky (Russian-American psychiatrist and scholar)
Between your poems and mine there is no iron curtain.
- Andrei Voznesensky (Russian poet, "icon of Soviet intellectuals") 

Read a sample:

Poems on Poetry:

PROPHECY

The static that you hear
when reading my poems today
will sounds like sweet music
in the ears of your sons

- Robert Zend, January 15, 1967, p. 72
SKY BLUE

The day will dawn when
someone will seize my poems
and unravel the lovely blue lines of ink
knotted in my letters
and take the thin thread
and bury one end
deep inside the earth
and bind the other end around his waist
for his leap out into space

- Robert Zend, March 27, 1964, p. 76
WHAT THE POET IS
The poet is a wos
(a sow backward)
feeding on trash,
emptying food

- Robert Zend, January 8, 1967, p. 54

THE DIFFERENCE

The pseudo-poet uses the medium
of poetry to speak;
the true poet is used as a medium
through whom poetry speaks.

- Robert Zend, March 3, 1982, p. 24

Selected "ditto poems:"

"Ditto Poems cannot be read like ordinary poems. Because of the letters placed at random, they have to be scanned, like radar or TV tubes. The reader's eye has to follow the letters patiently, from left to right, line by line, top to bottom, with conscious concentration. To understand the poems, the reader must link the letters into words (every new word starts with a  capital letter) and the words into phrases. Ditto Poetry is a reversed sort of poetry: the poet has the fun and the reader does the work."
- John Robert Colombo in Beyond Labels,  p. 86.
Ditto poem, Robert Zend, Zend, Beyond Labels, John Robert Colombo
Robert Zend and John Robert Colombo (Ditto poem), p. 112.
Robert Zend, Zend, Ditto poem, John Robert Colombo, Ultimate Ditto Poem
Robert Zend and John Robert Colombo (Ditto Poem), p. 113.

Selected "drop poems:"

"I invented Drop Poetry in 1982, as an off-shoot (improvement?) of Ditto Poetry. Its rules are tougher than those of its predecessor, both for the poet and the reader. Since the letters of the poem "drop" from the title, the poet can use each letter of the title only once, and only in the original order. The reader, on the other hand, has to read each poem twice: first the title (in two lines), then the poem (second line only). Thus, the possibilities are even more limited, and the discrepancy between the "title" and the "poem" is greater than in the Ditto poems."
- Robert Zend in Beyond Labels, p. 116.
Drop poem, Robert Zend, Bank interest, Beyond Labels
Robert Zend, p. 117.
Drop poem, Robert Zend, Fidel Castro, Beyond Labels
Robert Zend, p. 117

Essay and Prose Poems:

Robert Zend, "Preface: Labels," pp. 1-10:

labels.pdf
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"Psalm," for Northrop Frye, pp. 55-57

psalm.pdf
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Robert Zend, "Dragonfly, for Julius Marosan," p. 51

Robert Zend, Dragonfly, Zend, Beyond Labels, Julius Marosan, Marosan
Robert Zend, August 29, 1963, p. 51.

Painting by Julius Marosan that inspired the poem:

Julius Marosan, Marosan, Dragonfly
"Dragonfly," by Julius Marosan, Janine Zend's private collection.
As early as 1963, Zend was beginning to experiment with spacial configuration in his poetry, adding visual movement complementing the meaning,
- Camille Martin, "Robert Zend: Poet without Borders, Part 7. Canadian Literary Cross-Pollination: bpNichol," rogueembryo.com, February 17, 2014

Robert Zend, "An Epistle to Leopardi," pp. 65-69

zend_-_an_epistle_to_leopardi.pdf
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The poem of Leopardi's to which Zend is responding: 

Leopardi's "night song of a shepherd in asia"

Camille Martin on Zend and Leopardi:

"Zend shares with [Italian Romantic poet Giacomo] Leopardi [1798-1837] the mindset of a misfit and skeptic contemplating the absurdity of life and death, albeit often with a more playful tone." [...] "In Zend’s tongue-in-cheek 'An Epistle to Leopardi,' addressed to 'my dear dead friend, / Italian count, poet, philosopher and misfit,' the epistoler tries unsuccessfully to assume the bleak mood appropriate to the dread of death and (quoting Leopardi) its 'dark tunnel,' 'steep abyss,' and 'annihilation.' Although everything dies, from 'Universe [to] Quark,' he imagines an afterlife in which one of Leopardi’s 'former atoms now resides somewhere / in one of my ear-lobes,' or conversely, 'one of the molecules in my brain / was part of the white of [Leopardi's] big toenail.'

"However, try as he might, he finds himself unable to experience the emotions that Leopardi associates with mortality: relief, remorse, unhappiness, and anxiety. As an antidote to Leopardi’s austere melancholia without the promise of paradise, he deploys an absurdly tautological argumentat to prove Leopardi’s obsessive theme to be meaningless: his problem is 'not death, but existence,' 'against which we have but one weapon: Life,' which, coming full circle, is in turn 'solved by death.'"

- Camille Martin, "Robert Zend: Poet without Borders, Part 11. International Affinities: Italy (Leopardi and Pirandello)," rogueembryo.com, March 1, 2014

Download the complete book:

beyond_labels.pdf
File Size: 23297 kb
File Type: pdf
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Suggested donation $5-15:


out of print. Help get it republished!
   Copyright © Janine Zend, 2014, all rights reserved.
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