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Paul Blackburn was an esteemed translator of
Garcia Lorca, Cortazar and Octavio Paz, as well as
of the medieval troubadours (e.g. Proensa: An
anthology of Troubadour poetry, 1978) (Reisman,
2012). He is a significant and influential figure for
the beat generation writers being heavily
influenced himself by Pound, WCW, Zukofsky,
Creeley, Olsen and Whitman. He was personal
friends with Williams, Creeley, Olsen and Pound.
The shaman often deals with “Journeying” and
“Soul Projection”(Harvey & Wallis, 2007). We see
this in "El Camino Verde" where he states "The
green road lies the way, I take the road of sand".
The green road is the road of "olives" the coveted
transcendence, the road of sand is the arduous trek
where the mystical transformation takes place,
where "the serpent of wind plucks and twists the
harp of the sun". In Jungian psychology, the
serpent is a divine analogue of an obstacle which
needs to be overcome by the hero. Here we see the
presence of "dreams" of the necessary "mastery of
spirits" in Blackburn's shamanic flight. In "Park
Poem" we see the presence of "guardian spirits"
"Hawk Circles over the sea…My act".
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