Rich Blevins’ first national publication was in Richard Grossinger’s Io. He has published four books of poetry, three since 2000. Three Sleeps: A Historomance (1992) announced the poet as what Olson called an ‘istorin, or one who sees for himself. Its trip reports from the American West include poems written during field work for his dissertation. Fogbow Bridge: Selected Poems, 1972-1999 (2000) makes available all the material that the poet, at 50, wished to claim. Herman Melville is the presiding spirit, from the title through a central poem, “Clarel’s Motel,” of this collection. His two latest books are exercises in the long poem and meant to extend the poet’s range from history into studies in music and photography. Castle Tubin (2006) features meditations on Shostakovitch’s “Preludes and Fugues” and the symphonies of Eduard Tubin. Captivity Narratives (2008) pairs long poems on the lost careers of photographer Fred Holland Day and pre-Imagist Adelaide Crapsey.

Rich Blevins’ scholarly writing is highlighted by volumes 9 and 10 of Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, for Black Sparrow Press. His edition of George F. Butterick’s Complete Poems includes a Preface by Creeley. He has written a dozen articles (on Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, George Oppen, Penelope Fitzgerald, Louis Zukofsky, Kenneth Patchen, Paul Blackburn, Robert Kelly, among others) for encyclopedias (DLB, Encyclopedia of American Literature, Encyclopedia of World Literature, and The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia), and many essays and reviews for journals, especially Sagetrieb. He has given talks and professional papers on Pound, Creeley, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Robert Graves, Dorn, Joel Oppenheimer, and Kenneth Rexroth. He was, from 1980 to 1988, editor and co-publisher, with Bill Shields, of Zelot Press. Among its 70 titles are books and chapbooks by Butterick, Kenneth Irby, Donald Byrd, Fielding Dawson, and Douglas Woolf. Oppenheimer’s chapbook, the uses of adversity, was reprinted in a New Directions anthology.

Blevins’ literary archive is housed at Kent State. Some of his correspondence is in special collections at the University of Connecticut, SUNY-Buffalo, UC-San Diego, and UCLA.

His wife Martha J. Koehler is the author of Models of Reading (Bucknell, 2005), a critique of the eighteenth-century epistolary novel. They live in western Pennsylvania with their two daughters. His son is a musician in Pittsbugh. Among his closest associates and sustaining friends, not mentioned above, have been Robert J. Bertholf, Sherman Paul, Gerrit Lansing, Peter Kidd, Helen Adam, Steve Ellis, Judith Vollmer, and Jed Hickson.

Bertholf, Robert J. Remembering Joel Oppenheimer (Jersey City: Talisman House, 2006), pp. 91—105.

Blevins, Richard. “’The Single Intelligence’: The Formation of Robert Creeley’s Epistemology,” Poetics Journal, 9 (June 1991): 144-148.

"From the Muddle Out: Chaos Theory and Some Poems by Joel Oppenheimer,"Talisman, 20 (Winter 1999): 60-68.

"'An Appetite for Moving': Notes from Robert Duncan's Seminar at KentState, 1972," Talisman, 11 (Fall 1993): 215-225.

"Robert Kelly." DLB, vol. 130 (Detroit: Gale, 1993), pp. 207—216.

"Douglas Woolf." DLB, vol. 244 (Detroit: Gale, 2001), pp. 307—314.

Critical pieces on Blevins' work:

Temes, Peter. Preface, Castle Tubin (Norwood, Mass: Press One, 2006), pp.vii-viii.

Dorn, Edward. Introduction, Three Sleeps (Bedford, NH: Igneus, 1991), pp.3—4.

Ellis, Stephen. "Down And Out, Yet Equally Up, Over And Across: TheAntithetical Physics Of Rich Blevins' Fogbow Bridge." Fogbow Bridge(Columbus, Oh: Pavement Saw, 2000), pp. [3-24].