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Black Mountain Poems
Black Mountain College had an explosive influence on American poetry, music, art, craft, dance, and thought; it’s hard to imagine any other institution that was so utopian, rebellious, and experimental. Founded with the mission of creating rounded, complete people by balancing the arts and manual labor within a democratic, nonhierarchical structure, Black Mountain was a crucible of revolutionary literature. Although this artistic haven only existed from 1933 to 1956, Black Mountain helped inspire some of the most radical and significant midcentury American poets.
This anthology begins with the well-known Black Mountain Poets—Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Denise Levertov—but also includes the artist Josef Albers and the musician John Cage, as well as the often overlooked women associated with the college, M. C. Richards and Hilda Morley.
This anthology begins with the well-known Black Mountain Poets—Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Denise Levertov—but also includes the artist Josef Albers and the musician John Cage, as well as the often overlooked women associated with the college, M. C. Richards and Hilda Morley.
- GenresPoetryAnthologies
144 pages, Paperback
Published November 26, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
May 19, 2022
this was my subway read for the week i was back in new york for commencement: solid and grounding, nourishes a belief in community while resisting a single, monolithic politics / poetics, am charmed by the notion of poetry as a generative dialogue, that "life is involvement with itself."
December 7, 2025
They didn't regard themselves as an avant grade, of that I'm sure. They were the students and teachers of Black Mountain College, their tenures brief, their investiture delayed, often the faculty outnumbered the students. This little volume stands as a monument to all that, beautifully curated, the wit off to the side but its proverbial salience, rock-solid. The Irish musician-poet, Jonathan C. Creasy, deserves more than a tip of the wandering minstrel's cap. I loved reading these poems gathered to be about the size of an individual poet's volume, and called Black Mountain Poems.
I was recently asked by an online literary history encyclopedia to write 1500 words on Black Mountain. Because it was a literary encyclopedia, I assumed they meant the Black Mountain School. The task is perplexing, because as I was first coming into the orders of poetry, in the Eighties, contemporary verse was divided into "schools" -- and Black Mountain served as a kind of ur-instance. Which in itself is quite deceptive. Black Mountain College was the thing that concerned its last rector, the poet Charles Olson. Olson tried and failed to keep the College funded. However, Olson's educational experience was in American Studies at Harvard, and his political experience was what suited him, for ill or not, in his fund-raising. He thought the idea of a Black Mountain school of poetry was a crock. It was a College for the Arts, not just poetry. Creasy's introduction to the anthology finds some of the requisite proof for Olson's claim. For me, ésked what the Black Mountain school is, I would hand the interrogator Creasy's volume, but in my task I didn't have the luxury, so I felt compelled to say something of Olson's pedagogy ("for Charles, education was spiritual attack," Robert Duncan told Ann Charters), as well as something of his protégé Robert Duncan's reification of his experience at Black Mountain when, late in his career, he began to reflect on the poetics that emerged from that period of his first meeting Olson.
How much simpler to read the poems. Creasy's got essential things here: Josef and Anni Albers in their pedagogy, with Josef's poem, "More or Less," Creeley's poem for Paul Blackburn, an excerpt from Buckminster Fuller's "Untitled Epic Poem . . .", Paul Goodman's revision on John Andrew Rice's Left Republicanism, M. C. Richards' poem-centering, John Cage's 32 questions, Blackburn's poem on Mazeroski's shot, and on and on. It should be recalled, and this volume helps one to it, that "beatnik"-ism isn't a thing until Dobie Gillis and then its further centering by 1964 with the rise of the hippie. Therefore, what you're looking at in Black Mountain College are the ideas that will find ground in The New Left -- indeed, Paul Goodman's writings about education are a crucial harvest seeded in Buncombe county. By 1964, Olson's life had taken a serious downward turn. But as Creasy's gallery shows, the "intrinsic functioning" of his work remains.
I was recently asked by an online literary history encyclopedia to write 1500 words on Black Mountain. Because it was a literary encyclopedia, I assumed they meant the Black Mountain School. The task is perplexing, because as I was first coming into the orders of poetry, in the Eighties, contemporary verse was divided into "schools" -- and Black Mountain served as a kind of ur-instance. Which in itself is quite deceptive. Black Mountain College was the thing that concerned its last rector, the poet Charles Olson. Olson tried and failed to keep the College funded. However, Olson's educational experience was in American Studies at Harvard, and his political experience was what suited him, for ill or not, in his fund-raising. He thought the idea of a Black Mountain school of poetry was a crock. It was a College for the Arts, not just poetry. Creasy's introduction to the anthology finds some of the requisite proof for Olson's claim. For me, ésked what the Black Mountain school is, I would hand the interrogator Creasy's volume, but in my task I didn't have the luxury, so I felt compelled to say something of Olson's pedagogy ("for Charles, education was spiritual attack," Robert Duncan told Ann Charters), as well as something of his protégé Robert Duncan's reification of his experience at Black Mountain when, late in his career, he began to reflect on the poetics that emerged from that period of his first meeting Olson.
How much simpler to read the poems. Creasy's got essential things here: Josef and Anni Albers in their pedagogy, with Josef's poem, "More or Less," Creeley's poem for Paul Blackburn, an excerpt from Buckminster Fuller's "Untitled Epic Poem . . .", Paul Goodman's revision on John Andrew Rice's Left Republicanism, M. C. Richards' poem-centering, John Cage's 32 questions, Blackburn's poem on Mazeroski's shot, and on and on. It should be recalled, and this volume helps one to it, that "beatnik"-ism isn't a thing until Dobie Gillis and then its further centering by 1964 with the rise of the hippie. Therefore, what you're looking at in Black Mountain College are the ideas that will find ground in The New Left -- indeed, Paul Goodman's writings about education are a crucial harvest seeded in Buncombe county. By 1964, Olson's life had taken a serious downward turn. But as Creasy's gallery shows, the "intrinsic functioning" of his work remains.
November 12, 2020
Great and diverse poetry from the students and the teachers. I enjoyed it very much and I felt very inspired through each and every poem.
June 23, 2021
some real gems in this anthology. feel like i could’ve vibed with black mountain college. though i don’t know if it would have been good for me.
(something about those blue ridge mountains....)
(something about those blue ridge mountains....)
September 22, 2024
“Love is the present act” —— the most cogent lesson this school stood to teach us.
August 19, 2019
Full disclosure before I start, I was lucky enough to receive a galley copy from the good people at New Directions with the understanding that I write a shelf talker for the store I work in when the book is officially released in November. I intend to replicate that review here.
In the introduction to this curious collection of poetry, editor Jonathan C. Creasy states that he has travelled the globe with small books of poetry tucked into his pants pockets that have served as constant companions in his search for new ways of seeing and feeling the world. He goes on to impart his wish that this collection, “Black Mountain Poems” is able to become that to his own audience. For the two weeks after I had received this in the mail, I can confirm that this collection has become just that. I look forward to spending more time with the poems contained within as I look to them for companionship on my own travels.
While it was wonderful to acquaint myself with some of Black Mountain College’s heavy hitters like Robert Creeley, Charles Olsen and John Cage, I found the poetry of Edward Dorn and Jonathan Williams to be the highlights of this collection for me. That’s not to say the rest of the collection isn’t filled with gems. Denise Levertov’s poems in particular are a treat that I foresee coming back to regularly.
So, the question stands, to whom do I intend to recommend this collection to? I would say that anyone with an interest in avant-garde poetry before the Beats were making noise owes it to themselves to check this collection out. Whether they find solace in the words of Edward Dorn or enjoy the word smithing of Paul Blackburn, their is a sampling here to satiate even the most discerning of readers.
In the introduction to this curious collection of poetry, editor Jonathan C. Creasy states that he has travelled the globe with small books of poetry tucked into his pants pockets that have served as constant companions in his search for new ways of seeing and feeling the world. He goes on to impart his wish that this collection, “Black Mountain Poems” is able to become that to his own audience. For the two weeks after I had received this in the mail, I can confirm that this collection has become just that. I look forward to spending more time with the poems contained within as I look to them for companionship on my own travels.
While it was wonderful to acquaint myself with some of Black Mountain College’s heavy hitters like Robert Creeley, Charles Olsen and John Cage, I found the poetry of Edward Dorn and Jonathan Williams to be the highlights of this collection for me. That’s not to say the rest of the collection isn’t filled with gems. Denise Levertov’s poems in particular are a treat that I foresee coming back to regularly.
So, the question stands, to whom do I intend to recommend this collection to? I would say that anyone with an interest in avant-garde poetry before the Beats were making noise owes it to themselves to check this collection out. Whether they find solace in the words of Edward Dorn or enjoy the word smithing of Paul Blackburn, their is a sampling here to satiate even the most discerning of readers.
March 31, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed this short (96 page) anthology of Black Mountain Poems, though I finished the book still unsure what exactly a Black Mountain Poem was. Black Mountain College, of course, was a celebrated small arts college in west North Carolina that nurtured some of the brightest minds of the American avant garde, including John Cage, Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, and Paul Goodman. There is a "school" of poetry associated with the college...or is there? Charles Olson, the nucleus of the "school" if it existed, called the idea of a Black Mountain school of poets "bullshit," though a heading by that name in Donald Allen's anthology The New American Poetry seemed to make the label stick. Included in this anthology are poems by the expected group: Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Denise Levertov, who never set foot at Black Mountain College but got lumped in with the others anyway. There seems to be little stylistic similarity among these poets either: Levertov is crystalize and impassioned, while Duncan is romantic and a bit mystical, and Creeley is so minimal I find it hard to locate any felt emotion at all.
What makes this anthology really wonderful is that Creasy hasn't compiled an anthology of just the Black Mountain school of poets, but has really expanded the definition to include poems written by many figures best known for other work. There's a long manifesto-poem by Buckminster Fuller and some lovely verse by Paul Goodman, best known as a memoirist. There are writings by John Cage that are certainly poetic in their way, even if they don't follow any recognizable poetic forms. And there are also wonderful photographs and prose excerpts that give a good whiff of what BMC might have felt like in its heyday.
By placing these poems alongside more canonical Black Mountain poets, Creasy enriches our understanding of what made this place so special. It's clear that a genuinely interdisciplinary spirit obtained at BMC, and that "poetry" wasn't a mystery only open to a few poet-priests. BMC was radical in the literal sense: it started at the roots. It asked that simple question, what is a poem? Creasy has provided us several dozen of their answers.
What makes this anthology really wonderful is that Creasy hasn't compiled an anthology of just the Black Mountain school of poets, but has really expanded the definition to include poems written by many figures best known for other work. There's a long manifesto-poem by Buckminster Fuller and some lovely verse by Paul Goodman, best known as a memoirist. There are writings by John Cage that are certainly poetic in their way, even if they don't follow any recognizable poetic forms. And there are also wonderful photographs and prose excerpts that give a good whiff of what BMC might have felt like in its heyday.
By placing these poems alongside more canonical Black Mountain poets, Creasy enriches our understanding of what made this place so special. It's clear that a genuinely interdisciplinary spirit obtained at BMC, and that "poetry" wasn't a mystery only open to a few poet-priests. BMC was radical in the literal sense: it started at the roots. It asked that simple question, what is a poem? Creasy has provided us several dozen of their answers.
September 17, 2024
A deficient anthology. At a mere 96 pages it's extremely short, and lacks many of the most important poems of the most important poets. (Talk all you want about the importance of community over individual geniuses, some poets will remain more important than others, and it's precisely the "community" that guarantees this.) Clearly it's not meant to be a representative anthology, yet it doesn't well serve as a supplement to other books either. The obvious one would be Donald M. Allen's classic The New American Poetry, but there is too much overlap in their contents: only a few poems and pages, but those pages are important in so short a book.
This is exacerbated by the inclusion of non-poetry matter. I'm not talking about the pieces from John Cage or Buckminster Fuller, but stuff like quotations about the school by people who weren't involved with it. I'm amazed these weren't a relegated to the back cover. Surely Albert Einstein or Amiri Baraka telling me how cool the Black Mountain School is would be better motivation to buy the book than a blurb from some New Yorker mediocrity?
Worse: the photographs. These would be welcome in a longer anthology, for they give us a sense of the atmosphere of the place and the other artforms it fostered--but this is not a longer anthology. The editorial policy makes it worse. We get, for example, a painting by de Kooning, but its effect is somewhat ruined by not being in color. We might've also had a picture of, say, one of Ruth Asawa's wire sculptures, which would translate much better to greyscale, but instead we get a picture of her. One guess as to why that is.
Admittedly, taken as a stand-alone reading experience, it's not a bad book. The selection and sequencing of the material conveys an adequate sense of the spirit of the place. But compared to what it could have been, the book is quite bad. I can only explain the praise it received with the fact that there was nothing like it on the market at the time. Thankfully, as of February 2025, the publication of The Anthology of Black Mountain College Poetry on The University of North Carolina Press will make this book obsolete.
This is exacerbated by the inclusion of non-poetry matter. I'm not talking about the pieces from John Cage or Buckminster Fuller, but stuff like quotations about the school by people who weren't involved with it. I'm amazed these weren't a relegated to the back cover. Surely Albert Einstein or Amiri Baraka telling me how cool the Black Mountain School is would be better motivation to buy the book than a blurb from some New Yorker mediocrity?
Worse: the photographs. These would be welcome in a longer anthology, for they give us a sense of the atmosphere of the place and the other artforms it fostered--but this is not a longer anthology. The editorial policy makes it worse. We get, for example, a painting by de Kooning, but its effect is somewhat ruined by not being in color. We might've also had a picture of, say, one of Ruth Asawa's wire sculptures, which would translate much better to greyscale, but instead we get a picture of her. One guess as to why that is.
Admittedly, taken as a stand-alone reading experience, it's not a bad book. The selection and sequencing of the material conveys an adequate sense of the spirit of the place. But compared to what it could have been, the book is quite bad. I can only explain the praise it received with the fact that there was nothing like it on the market at the time. Thankfully, as of February 2025, the publication of The Anthology of Black Mountain College Poetry on The University of North Carolina Press will make this book obsolete.
April 28, 2020
As an experience, I loved this little book. The poems are not all great, but I liked the brevity and variety of the collection; in every writer was visible flashes of genius. Even the cover and colors are just plain enough. Just right. Discovering Robert Duncan was a nice little treasure. His “Thank You for Love” is now one of my favorites. Will return again :)
October 6, 2022
An excellent collection of uneven poems, which capture a moment, an experiment, and a vision for the way we could make things and through that ourselves. Levertov and Creeley are the best, here. B. Fuller is the worst. But the whole is something more.
January 28, 2025
Favorites: Josef Albers' "Poems and Drawings," Robert Duncan's "The Structure of Rime I," and Paul Goodman's "Little Prayers"
"But my daily fact, Lord,
is that awake I am a coward
and in my dreams that say the cause
I have lost the address, I'm confused."
"But my daily fact, Lord,
is that awake I am a coward
and in my dreams that say the cause
I have lost the address, I'm confused."
October 29, 2025
I really enjoyed the selection of poems and introductions.
“I have travelled the globe with small books of poetry tucked into my pockets, constant companions in my search for new ways of seeing and feeling the world. My hope is that, for some, this volume becomes a faithful friend”.
“I have travelled the globe with small books of poetry tucked into my pockets, constant companions in my search for new ways of seeing and feeling the world. My hope is that, for some, this volume becomes a faithful friend”.
January 11, 2020
After the first generation of modernists, it's really hard to find any cracker poetry worth reading. Unless you happen across the Black Mountain School.
February 9, 2022
Can you ever really give poetry books a poor rating?
December 18, 2023
Not enough women
Read
October 16, 2024Honestly, not my cup of tea. I did enjoy M. C. Richards's work, though.
January 15, 2025
really helpful starting point for the far-reaching experiment in art and education that was black mountain college. littered with beautiful poems throughout.
January 1, 2024
A few impressions early on in this anthology. First, Jonathan Creasy is an expert editor; that much is clear from even the first few poets and pieces selected; the introduction to the work of Josef and then Anni Albers was worth the price of the collection.
Creasy is also an excellent scholar, appreciator, and presenter of Black Mountain poetry. His introduction is a captivating, compact seminar, full of valuable and compelling perspectives. I did not, for example, prior to picking up this anthology, that Charles Olson himself rejected the idea of a common Black Mountain poetics. (One of my favorite poets, rejecting what I thought was likely to be a favorite "school" of poetry, based on what I knew of Olson and Creely.)
I also didn't realize that Black Mountain was a paradigm-changing and norm-challenging college in ways that transcended its approach to teaching, learning, and art. Anna Stone Williams became the first African American to integrate a white college in the South when she entered Black Mountain's summer music program in 1944. As the college's founder put it, in a 1936 article in Harper's Monthly, "There is a technic [sic] to be learned, a grammar of the art of living and working in the world.... We must realize that the world as it is isn't worth saving; it must be made over...."
A small note of disappointment: I was buzzing along, loving the book, loving the introduction, loving my introduction to Josef Albers, and then Anni Albers, and began reading the Olson selections with interest: which ones would Creasy choose? All joy in the collection came to a screeching halt at what I'm convinced is a typo in this printing's version of MAXIMUS, TO HIMSELF: "...have throne what light I could" instead of "have thrown what light I could." I was shocked. I bought this anthology in part to rely on it for an introduction to "Black Mountain" poets beyond the two I knew: how reliable will my first impressions of those poets be if I can't trust the texts offered as introductions to their works? Hopefully, context, and not familiarity, will make any other errors in the text apparent as I move forward.
What I find most appealing in Creasy's approach to this anthology, however, beyond his skill at selection and his excellent introduction is his explanation for why and how he went about making his selection:
In these complex times, Creasy's approach and perspective can prompt responses of our own which might be all the more vital and broadly applicable: Dig deep. Reach out. Don't hesitate to say even the most simple of beautiful human truths. All such acts are holy.
Creasy is also an excellent scholar, appreciator, and presenter of Black Mountain poetry. His introduction is a captivating, compact seminar, full of valuable and compelling perspectives. I did not, for example, prior to picking up this anthology, that Charles Olson himself rejected the idea of a common Black Mountain poetics. (One of my favorite poets, rejecting what I thought was likely to be a favorite "school" of poetry, based on what I knew of Olson and Creely.)
I also didn't realize that Black Mountain was a paradigm-changing and norm-challenging college in ways that transcended its approach to teaching, learning, and art. Anna Stone Williams became the first African American to integrate a white college in the South when she entered Black Mountain's summer music program in 1944. As the college's founder put it, in a 1936 article in Harper's Monthly, "There is a technic [sic] to be learned, a grammar of the art of living and working in the world.... We must realize that the world as it is isn't worth saving; it must be made over...."
A small note of disappointment: I was buzzing along, loving the book, loving the introduction, loving my introduction to Josef Albers, and then Anni Albers, and began reading the Olson selections with interest: which ones would Creasy choose? All joy in the collection came to a screeching halt at what I'm convinced is a typo in this printing's version of MAXIMUS, TO HIMSELF: "...have throne what light I could" instead of "have thrown what light I could." I was shocked. I bought this anthology in part to rely on it for an introduction to "Black Mountain" poets beyond the two I knew: how reliable will my first impressions of those poets be if I can't trust the texts offered as introductions to their works? Hopefully, context, and not familiarity, will make any other errors in the text apparent as I move forward.
What I find most appealing in Creasy's approach to this anthology, however, beyond his skill at selection and his excellent introduction is his explanation for why and how he went about making his selection:
In making the selections for this volume, I rely on years of keeping these poets close to my own heart and mind. The discovery of their work, and the attendant fascination with the people and the place of Black Mountain College, has shaped my writing and thinking. Olson reminds us that "Life is involvement with itself." The power of these poems exists in a ceaseless inward searching and outward project of simple human truths through the activity of poetry - poems as the measure of a life. They are involved in scriptural communion and conversation.
In these complex times, Creasy's approach and perspective can prompt responses of our own which might be all the more vital and broadly applicable: Dig deep. Reach out. Don't hesitate to say even the most simple of beautiful human truths. All such acts are holy.
March 1, 2020
A great little collection. I got to return to some favorites and make some new discoveries! “Bliss is actual, as hard as stone.”
April 29, 2023
wonderful working-class project
March 29, 2023
robert creeley quite literally gets it
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews