Finding Nothing

Gregory Betts is a professor in the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: Finding NothingWhen American Literature Moved to VancouverFinding Nothing (or, the Avant-Garde Flowering that Was the 1960s)The Problem of Nothing: A Short Interlude on the Theory of the Avant-Garde The VanGardes 1. 1–19 Thoughts on TISH, 1961–1969 (A Document of Response) 2. The Birth of BlewHarmony: Aristotle, Olson, and Vancouver, 1959–1963 Disharmony: Bissett, Collage, and another Vancouver, 1959–1983 The End of Categories: The Vancouver Litter-rary Collage 3. Blew CollageAt the Margins of the GardeBlewointmentCollage into CanadaLiterature into Collage (in Vancouver)4. A Line, A New Line, All One: Variant Narratives of Concrete CanadaThe Concrete Liturgy Canadian Concrete Other Narratives of Concrete Poetry Judith Copithorne on Vancouver Concrete Coda: The Visual Roots of the Alphabet5. The Triumph of Surrealism: Magick Art in VancouverVancouver Deformance The Surreal West Coast Precursors and Early Forays: Surrealism in Vancouver Canadian Literary Surrealism Super-natural British Columbia: From Lawren Harris to David W. Harris Post-revolutionary Surrealism The Colour of My Dreams 6. Performing Proprioception: The Birthing Story as Public Discourse 7. Avant Now and Then: Locating the Post-AvantHegemony and the Single Riot Haling Taxi! Locating the Post-Avant Neruda, Chile, and Further Disenchantments Conclusion: "we stopped at nothing" Finding Nothing in the Avant-Garde Archive List of FiguresAppendix A: Warren Tallman Elegy Apendix B: Concrete Poetry Appendix C: Glossary of Intermedia and Transdisciplinary Groups Appendix D: Letter to the Editor of the Georgia Straight Works Cited

"Finding Nothing is an excavation site for a special moment in Canadian poetic history."- Ron Verzuh (The Ormsby Review) "Many scholars will find Finding Nothing especially valuable for its informational and bibliographical content. Detailed lists of ephemeral little magazines and literary publishers, tabulations of contributors to the major periodicals, a fulsome index, and an appended glossary of ‘Intermedia and Transdisciplinary Groups’ further enhance this landmark study of a transformational phase in Canada’s cultural history."- Carole Gerson, Simon Fraser University (The Canadian Historical Review) "It is difficult to characterize Finding Nothing as anything less than a singularly important critical monograph that likely sets the terms of discussion in the field of Canadian avant-garde studies to come." - Scott Inniss (Canadian Literature)