Backscatter: New and Selected Poems of John Olson

by John Olson

John Olson's 7th volume of poetry and prose poems selects the best from his prior books and includes a significant amount of new material. He continues to push the boundaries of language as image after image bombards the reader in what poet Clayton Eshleman descibes as ..a volcanic, fresh, and scalding rush. Olson's growing legion of fans will not be disappointed.

Genres: Poetry

201 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2008

About the author

American poet and novelist.

Reviews

[SARDON · Rating 4 out of 5]

Upon my first encounter with John Olson's Promethean take on the prose poem, I knew, in spite of being often mystified by the particularity of his images, that here is a writer who attempts to maintain a high degree of fidelity between consciousness and its signification in words.

The constant shift from the sensory to the cerebral--mirrored in syntax ranging from short fragmentary bursts to ecstatically rambling complex sentences--often achieves Olson's goal of making the reader feel his consciousness come alive through the words. Of course, verbally shaping a force as insubstantial as consciousness leads equally to moments of lucidity and, sometimes, frustrating obfuscation.

An example of Olson at his most lucid taken from "Color Noctambule":

"At night the colors crawl down off the wall...They tell us we are blind and that they are nervous and teetering on rain. We are asleep and do not listen. Green walks around in a dark pine forest and blue says we have a friend in osmosis. A red rose gathers the lips of representation and makes a bouquet of syntax and breath."

And now for a possibly frustrating passage from "Curiosity was Born with the Universe":

"Yesterday's rain led to accordion clouds, freakish testaments of moisture. Today a band of lavender pools in a basin of quadrilateral mint, hinting at endless churning colors regenerating the skin of logic on a glockenspiel."

While some may fall for such flamboyant images, Olson is often at his best when he's writing clearer though no less wildly imaginative rhapsodies to mercury as in the aptly titled, "Mercury," or, in yet another chromatic evocation, the more cleverly titled, "Gray's Anatomy." These pieces shows Olson's profound ability to enter inside the microcosms contained within physical stimuli and render their intricate detail with radical devotion.

Of course, Olson has explicitly language-conscious works such as "City of Words," which shows a lucid fixation--worthy of Adam--on the connections between words and things. "The Mystery of Grocery Carts" reveals how inarticulate we are before the most simple and mundane things in spite of how precise our terminology for more "important" matters may be.

Perhaps the biggest caution I can give to any reader is that, if you are a reader of darker, more pessimistic sensibility, Olson's style can evoke the exuberant babbling of a drunkard whose altered state of mind affords a momentary enthusiasm that can sometimes be downright irritating (Olson proudly bears a very prominent stain of the Beats on his work, after all). Since I am, more or less, a pessimist, this was occasionally the case.

However, I would be daft to deny how Olson has put a very distinctive trademark on one of the most ambiguous and controversial literary forms. And with Russell Edson gone, lovers of the prose poem and young aspirants in this sub-form will find themselves more and more indebted to Olson's incomparably adventurous work.

[Ker]

A comprehensive anthology of new and selected prose poems by John Olson. What I love about Olson's surreal poetry is that it is also accessible; it pulls the reader in to his odd and wondrous point of view. One of my favorites: "Better Homes and Abstractions."

Full disclosure: I designed the interior of this book.