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Poet to Publisher: Charles Olson's Correspondence with Donald Allen
Donald M. Allen’s anthology The New American Poetry , published by Grove Press / Evergreen in the U.S.A. and the U.K., burst onto the literary scene in 1960 to become the single most important and influential book of poetry in the English language published in the second half of the 20th century.
Conceived originally as a collection intended to augment the anthologies of the 1950s with the work of American poets whose careers had flourished since the Second World War, it became, through the influence of Charles Olson (Donald Allen was his editor at Grove Press), a radical and revolutionary manifesto that echoed around the world.
Spanning the period from the modernists through the poets of Origin and The Black Mountain Review , the San Francisco Renaissance, the Beat Generation, the New York poets of the Poet’s Theatre, to the first mapping and performance of a new poetry and poetics from the racial, sexual, aboriginal and cultural margins of a formerly Euro-centric and chauvinist poetry, The New American Poetry became as liberating a movement in writing and letters worldwide as abstract expressionism has been in the visual arts, and as jazz has been in music.
Poet to Charles Olson’s Correspondence with Donald Allen tells the story of how that happened.
Conceived originally as a collection intended to augment the anthologies of the 1950s with the work of American poets whose careers had flourished since the Second World War, it became, through the influence of Charles Olson (Donald Allen was his editor at Grove Press), a radical and revolutionary manifesto that echoed around the world.
Spanning the period from the modernists through the poets of Origin and The Black Mountain Review , the San Francisco Renaissance, the Beat Generation, the New York poets of the Poet’s Theatre, to the first mapping and performance of a new poetry and poetics from the racial, sexual, aboriginal and cultural margins of a formerly Euro-centric and chauvinist poetry, The New American Poetry became as liberating a movement in writing and letters worldwide as abstract expressionism has been in the visual arts, and as jazz has been in music.
Poet to Charles Olson’s Correspondence with Donald Allen tells the story of how that happened.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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February 2, 2023
Donald Allen had been a Japanese translator during the Second World War, when, a year or two Olson's junior, the vet met the poet as he was returning from his post-Black Mountain-in-diaspora sojourn to San Francisco in February 1957. The friendship turned out to be life-changing for both, sophisticated literary world hub (Allen) and scholarly force-of-nature (Olson) who advised Allen through jobs at Grove, Scribners, and into Allen's independent Four Seasons Foundation, as well as the University of California, where Allen acted also as Frank O'Hara's editor.
Ralph Maud makes the strong decision to leave Allen's side of the correspondence out of the book; this might well be because Maud was himself working with Talon Books (British Columbia) on a series of books under his editorship, and no doubt it cost less money to make this a book about Olson.
Inevitably, however, it becomes about other things, as well, and I'm particularly concerned here for Allen's decision, circa 1961-62, to move from NYC to SF, partly, as this correspondence may make it seem, to spare himself further landings as bumpy as bringing Olson's The Distances between covers. Allen had made it a habit to do business with his Grove author by traveling up to Glouchester to see him; but their friendship may have made it difficult for Allen to operate in the way Olson came to rely on him -- as book packager, agent, as well as editor. (Allen may have been coming out during this period, as well.) Maud has nothing to say about this. It's a strange transference: control of Olson editorially seems to have passed from Allen to George Butterick & George Bowering to Maud; Allen was around at the time of Olson's death, but working on O'Hara stuff.
A particular concern is the way Olson used Allen to wage his intellectual conflicts with Robert Duncan through the three anthologies Allen packaged and edited. These are The New American Poetry (1960); The New American Story (1963); and The Poetics of the New American poetry (1973) -- all done with Grove. Duncan did not much like Allen during the period when the first of these was being edited; RD's participation in it wavered. But once Allen moved to SF, Duncan was a happy particpant in Allen's schemes. Olson didn't stop relying on Allen, however, even as his friendship with Duncan faded.
It's a fascinating account of Olson's public life we have here. Olson prided himself on not teaching (after the Black Mountain experience) despite being that most pedagogical of poets. In 1963, he anyway went to Buffalo, staying a year before his wife died in a tragic car wreck. Thus his reliance on Allen was considerable.
I find Maud's editing of this volume spottier than some of his other work.
Ralph Maud makes the strong decision to leave Allen's side of the correspondence out of the book; this might well be because Maud was himself working with Talon Books (British Columbia) on a series of books under his editorship, and no doubt it cost less money to make this a book about Olson.
Inevitably, however, it becomes about other things, as well, and I'm particularly concerned here for Allen's decision, circa 1961-62, to move from NYC to SF, partly, as this correspondence may make it seem, to spare himself further landings as bumpy as bringing Olson's The Distances between covers. Allen had made it a habit to do business with his Grove author by traveling up to Glouchester to see him; but their friendship may have made it difficult for Allen to operate in the way Olson came to rely on him -- as book packager, agent, as well as editor. (Allen may have been coming out during this period, as well.) Maud has nothing to say about this. It's a strange transference: control of Olson editorially seems to have passed from Allen to George Butterick & George Bowering to Maud; Allen was around at the time of Olson's death, but working on O'Hara stuff.
A particular concern is the way Olson used Allen to wage his intellectual conflicts with Robert Duncan through the three anthologies Allen packaged and edited. These are The New American Poetry (1960); The New American Story (1963); and The Poetics of the New American poetry (1973) -- all done with Grove. Duncan did not much like Allen during the period when the first of these was being edited; RD's participation in it wavered. But once Allen moved to SF, Duncan was a happy particpant in Allen's schemes. Olson didn't stop relying on Allen, however, even as his friendship with Duncan faded.
It's a fascinating account of Olson's public life we have here. Olson prided himself on not teaching (after the Black Mountain experience) despite being that most pedagogical of poets. In 1963, he anyway went to Buffalo, staying a year before his wife died in a tragic car wreck. Thus his reliance on Allen was considerable.
I find Maud's editing of this volume spottier than some of his other work.
Displaying 1 of 1 review