John Fraser
Список книг автора John FraserCamera Work (Revised Edition)
A major revision, the merely documentary gone, the symbolist-poetic intensified. Past and present, nature raw and cooked, imagistic juxtapositions, sunlit urn with cypresses, flames glowing as the ground thaws for a midwinter Minnesota grave. Enigmatic mannequin, pensive boys, racing girls, sentinel in the sky. <br><br>You don't need specific locations. This is all about possibilities, emblems, icons, moods, never settling down into a single mode, a single statement. Everything is in motion or with motion latent. The lyrical calms of sunset grass and pristine pebbled beach are sites for couples. not death-wish yearnings. There's a lovely wedding kiss. The cover's key-setting figure with bike at that dreamlike empty intersection has the potency that comes when the eye has fastened on something without the mind fully knowing why.<br><br>Escapes from "the malady of the quotidian." Lyrical/dramatic compositions. By the author of "Atget and the City."
Interfacing
Faces faces faces–thirty-four, if you count a delightful movie-crew group. Fascinating faces, those major elements in movies, photography, art. Mostly one-shots, taken spontaneously in a human-scale North Atlantic city-by-the-sea in the 1990s. No predatory irony or condescension, but strong reactions– surprise, wariness, delight, self-theatricalizing, etc. <br><br>Interesting individuals, including a couple of poets, two photographers, an artist, a movie-maker, a scholar, a peace activist, a short-story writer, and the vastly knowledgeable proprietor of a jazz and blues used-record store. But no, not about bio. About selves, including the photographer's, at the moment of interfacing, in various settings, with decisive compositions and rich pre-digital B&W.<br><br>All done with the lovely lightweight Canon EOS Rebel with the classic 50mm lens and available lighting. And organized with Fraser's unique musical sequencing of distinctive units.
Moments
With 50mm lenses and available light, John Fraser took these classic humanist photos in Minneapolis, New York, London, Nova Scotia, Provence, starting in 1957.<br><br>In the tradition of Cartier-Bresson, there's no cropping. What you see is what was there—street interactions caught lightning fast, informal portraits, oldsters, kids, a Blues group, a campaigning JFK within arms-length, and always the impeccable composition and feel for the symbolic.<br><br>The images are arranged in poem-like sequences—moody Shadows, lyrical Sun, symbolic Erotics, the old and new London in eight Postcards. The Republicans at a little street rally look like type-casting. But there's no programmatic irony, and the pervasive tone of the book is enjoyment.<br><br>These are works that don't date.
Pushing Back: Language, Truth, and Consequences
Pushing Back pushes back against GBTs (Great Big Theories) that confine literary discourse, especially poems, to zones where realworld truth-testing and value-judgments are told, "Keep Out; This Means You." Fraser steers between the Scylla of transcendent insights obtained courtesy of Metaphor, Image, and Symbol, Inc., and the Charybdis of literary language sucking its own pretensions down into the Void. A disrespecter of fixed categories and dichotomies himself, he shows by a variety of means how a functional looseness and local precisions, grounded in realworld experiences and the speaking voice, are a defence against implosion and collapse.. <br><br>In an opening set of four articles, he looks, with an abundance of examples, at the workings of so-called ordinary language and the satisfiable hunger for plenitude, communality, and emotional substance. After which, the topics that he touches on include Mallarmé, Hopkins, Woolf ( kinesthetic richness), Stanley Fish and Northrop Frye (ungood), Yvor Winters and F.R. Leavis (good), Symbolism and Genius (proceed with caution), Descartes and Swift (Enlightenment energies), and Gérard de Nerval (psychological brilliance, and "classical" clarity, as celebrated at a Martian conference). <br><br>In the last part of the book, going on from points in the Introduction, Fraser conducts a guerrilla campaign against old-world nihilism, whoopy-doopy Silicon futurism, and simplistic ideas of Truth, and reaffirms the importance of political engagement. Shakespeare, Borges, Pound, Fenollosa, the Glub, and sub-Saharan African art are among the guest appearances. Plus a few recollections about his dealings with theory as graduate-student 'zine editor and, years later, seminar-giver.<br><br>251 words
Desires; Sixty-five French Poems Plus a Small But Famous German One
John Fraser, Desires: Sixty-five French poems and one small but famous German one, translated and introduced by John Fraser. <br><br>The core of Desires is a mini-anthology of sixty-five French poems translated by John Fraser and described in the foreword by scholar-translator Benoit Tadié as "beautiful" and "intensely empathetic." Taken from Fraser's major online anthology A New Book of Verse, they belong in an emergent re-seeing of French poetic history. <br><br>Part I consists largely of "libertine" (free-thinking) poems from the Renaissance and 17th century, in which the joys of Eros are celebrated within a realworld context of the body's limitations (age, impotence, the pox) and savage punishments for "heresy" (lethal imprisonment, burning at the stake). The language, at times unfussily direct, at others richly figurative, is refreshingly free of Petrarchan and neo-classical clichés. <br><br>Among the male poets are Ronsard, Théophile de Viau, and Claude Le Petit. Among the women, witty aristocrats with minds and desires of their own, like Heliette de Vivonne and Louise-Marguerite de Lorraine. The classicism (real, not neo-) of Part I is followed in Part II by the classical romanticism of a variety of 19th and 20th century poems. There had been underground continuities during the neo-classical dominance.. <br><br>The book includes major discoveries like Le Petit's 300-line "Farewell of the Pleasure Girls to the City of Paris" and Jeanne-Marie Durry's "Orpheus' Plea"; subversive poems by radicals like Louise Michel, Aristide Bruand, and Georges Brassens; and fresh translations of poems by classics like Desbordes-Valmore. Gautier, Laforgue, and Apollinaire, including the last-named's notoriously difficult "Lul de Faltenin." There is a long iconoclastic introduction, numerous notes, and an affectionate appendix on Gerard de Nerval and classical-romanticism, with very funny quotations from his fiction.<br><br>The eleven hundred Anglo, French, and German poems in A New Book of Verse can be accessed via Voices in the Cave of Being.
Thrillers
After years of intellectual nourishment from thrillers, along with the delights of suspense, Fraser explores the thought-processes of representative thriller characters coping with high-tension situations that require intelligent problem-solving and bring their values into a sharper focus. <br><br>With alert empathy, he follows Jack Carter as he hunts down his brother's killers in Ted Lewis's masterpiece Jack's Return Home ("a kind of dark English Gatsby") ; suffers along with violence-averse Rae Ingram coping alone on a small yacht with a dangerous paranoid in Dead Calm ("a philosophical thriller") by that fine Gold Medal novelist Charles Williams; and gives a lot of attention to Donald Hamilton's young professional men entangled with enigmatic young women in pre-Helm works like The Steel Mirror (1948) where he was learning his craft. <br><br>In a fourth chapter, he hacks at the wall between "art" and "entertainment" and loose talk about the "world" of the thriller. Lastly, he reminiscences about a fascinating safari that he made into the sex-'n-violence "Mushroom Jungle" (British pulp fiction ca.1946-54), and offers conclusions about violence and peace.<br><br>He avoids jargon, combines an aficionado's enthusiasm with a scholar's accuracy, quotes generously to convey the texture of a work, provides background information for readers new to the topic, and illuminates "craft" aspects of fiction in general. His emphasis throughout is positive.
A Bit of This and a Bit of That About Poetry
A reviewer of JOHN FRASER'S widely praised Violence in the Arts (1973) spoke of encountering in it "an extremely agile and incessantly active mind that illuminates almost every subject that he touches." As a reader of poetry he is in search of felt life and expressive form. He feels his way forward through poems as speech acts, rather than latching onto whatever Big Poetic Truths they are presumed to be disclosing, or treating them as raw material to be given significance by Theory. And he enters them from a variety of directions.<br><br>The components of A Bit of This and a Bit of That about Poetry include:<br>—A fast, funny bit of intellectual autobiography.<br>—A tracing of the stylistic changes by which poetry ca 1880-1920 had muscle and realworld grounding restored to it. <br>—A re-entry into his formative childhood experiences of poetry in the 1930s, including winning a BIG school cup at age ten by reciting forty proto-symbolist lines from Tennyson's 'Idylls of the King', whose linguistic strangeness he recreates here.<br>—Jargon-free commentaries on formal and referential aspects of a dozen of his favorite poems, with their glow-worms, and gondolas, and garlic, and so forth. <br>—A spelunking trip through the remarkable inner spaces opened up by the uncoupling of syntax from stanzaic form in George Herbert's "Church Monuments."<br>—Three common-language forays into theoretical matters (symbolism, imagination, genius, etc), with a healthy refusal to be awed by the Byzantine structures that have grown up around them.<br><br>—An interactive mix of observations and quotations about a variety of topics, including Greek and the Book of Nature, thrillers as paradigms, high Romanticism, lovely pop lyrics ("The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations"), and the Demon Weed. <br>Fraser's celebrations of plenitude and the energy-charged flow of verse make A Bit of This and That a book that can be enjoyed whether one is primarily into free verse or more regular kinds.
Nihilism, Modernism, and Value
Nihilism, Modernism, and Value consists of three jargon-free lectures addressed to the general reader. It explores a variety of ways in which writers responded to the phenomenon of nihilism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, By "nihilism" here is meant a sense, at times paralyzing, of the instability and perhaps groundlessness of all values. The book goes into some of the factors— psychological, sociological, philosophical—involved in that destabilizing. But its principal focus is on reintegration, and it draws freely on real-world experiences to illuminate concepts and strategies. <br><br>Among the writers whose names figure in it are Conrad, Nietzsche, Beckett, Woolf, Heidegger, Rhys, Pushkin, Baudelaire, Hemingway, Lessing, Stevens, Valéry, and James (William), with particular attention at one point to Kafka and Borges. But no prior knowledge of them is required for following the argument, with its numerous lively quotations. The author himself is advancing heuristically, not just performing an academic exercise. The problems confronted are as relevant still as they were generations ago.<br><br>A reviewer of John Fraser's first book spoke of "an extremely agile and incessantly active mind which illuminates almost every subject it touches." A reviewer of the second one, both of them published by Cambridge University Press, called it "a brilliant and utterly absorbing work," and said that "There are not many learned books which have the unputdownable quality of a thriller; this is one of them."
Implementing Enterprise Risk Management. Case Studies and Best Practices
Overcome ERM implementation challenges by taking cues from leading global organizations Implementing Enterprise Risk Management is a practical guide to establishing an effective ERM system by applying best practices at a granular level. Case studies of leading organizations including Mars, Statoil, LEGO, British Columbia Lottery Corporation, and Astro illustrate the real-world implementation of ERM on a macro level, while also addressing how ERM informs the response to specific incidents. Readers will learn how top companies are effectively constructing ERM systems to positively drive financial growth and manage operational and outside risk factors. By addressing the challenges of adopting ERM in large organizations with different functioning silos and well-established processes, this guide provides expert insight into fitting the new framework into cultures resistant to change. Enterprise risk management covers accidental losses as well as financial, strategic, operational, and other risks. Recent economic and financial market volatility has fueled a heightened interest in ERM, and regulators and investors have begun to scrutinize companies' risk-management policies and procedures. Implementing Enterprise Risk Management provides clear, demonstrative instruction on establishing a strong, effective system. Readers will learn to: Put the right people in the right places to build a strong ERM framework Establish an ERM system in the face of cultural, logistical, and historical challenges Create a common language and reporting system for communicating key risk indicators Create a risk-aware culture without discouraging beneficial risk-taking behaviors ERM is a complex endeavor, requiring expert planning, organization, and leadership, with the goal of steering a company's activities in a direction that minimizes the effects of risk on financial value and performance. Corporate boards are increasingly required to review and report on the adequacy of ERM in the organizations they administer, and Implementing Enterprise Risk Management offers operative guidance for creating a program that will pass muster.
Enterprise Risk Management. Today's Leading Research and Best Practices for Tomorrow's Executives
Essential insights on the various aspects of enterprise risk management If you want to understand enterprise risk management from some of the leading academics and practitioners of this exciting new methodology, Enterprise Risk Management is the book for you. Through in-depth insights into what practitioners of this evolving business practice are actually doing as well as anticipating what needs to be taught on the topic, John Fraser and Betty Simkins have sought out the leading experts in this field to clearly explain what enterprise risk management is and how you can teach, learn, and implement these leading practices within the context of your business activities. In this book, the authors take a broad view of ERM, or what is called a holistic approach to ERM. Enterprise Risk Management introduces you to the wide range of concepts and techniques for managing risk in a holistic way that correctly identifies risks and prioritizes the appropriate responses. This invaluable guide offers a broad overview of the different types of techniques: the role of the board, risk tolerances, risk profiles, risk workshops, and allocation of resources, while focusing on the principles that determine business success. This comprehensive resource also provides a thorough introduction to enterprise risk management as it relates to credit, market, and operational risk, as well as the evolving requirements of the rating agencies and their importance to the overall risk management in a corporate setting. Filled with helpful tables and charts, Enterprise Risk Management offers a wealth of knowledge on the drivers, the techniques, the benefits, as well as the pitfalls to avoid, in successfully implementing enterprise risk management. Discusses the history of risk management and more recently developed enterprise risk management practices and how you can prudently implement these techniques within the context of your underlying business activities Provides coverage of topics such as the role of the chief risk officer, the use of anonymous voting technology, and risk indicators and their role in risk management Explores the culture and practices of enterprise risk management without getting bogged down by the mathematics surrounding the more conventional approaches to financial risk management This informative guide will help you unlock the incredible potential of enterprise risk management, which has been described as a proxy for good management.