Selected Writings

by Charles Olson, Robert Creeley (Editor)

1966 NEW DIRECTIONS SOFTCOVER

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Literature

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Charles Olson was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Consequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of the Language School, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure. He described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as "an archeologist of morning."

Olson's first book was Call Me Ishmael (1947), a study of Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick which was a continuation of his M.A. thesis from Wesleyan University.[5] In Projective Verse (1950), Olson called for a poetic meter based on the breath of the poet and an open construction based on sound and the linking of perceptions rather than syntax and logic. The poem "The Kingfishers", first published in 1949 and collected in his first book of poetry, In Cold Hell, in Thicket (1953), is an application of the manifesto.

His second collection, The Distances, was published in 1960. Olson served as rector of the Black Mountain College from 1951 to 1956. During this period, the college supported work by John Cage, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, Fielding Dawson, Cy Twombly, Jonathan Williams, Ed Dorn, Stan Brakhage and many other members of the 1950s American avant garde. Olson is listed as an influence on artists including Carolee Schneemann and James Tenney.[6]

Olson's reputation rests in the main on his complex, sometimes difficult poems such as "The Kingfishers", "In Cold Hell, in Thicket", and The Maximus Poems, work that tends to explore social, historical, and political concerns. His shorter verse, poems such as "Only The Red Fox, Only The Crow", "Other Than", "An Ode on Nativity", "Love", and "The Ring Of", manifest a sincere, original, accessible, emotionally powerful voice. "Letter 27 [withheld]" from The Maximus Poems weds Olson's lyric, historic, and aesthetic concerns. Olson coined the term postmodern in a letter of August 1951 to his friend and fellow poet, Robert Creeley.

In 1950, inspired by the example of Pound's Cantos (though Olson denied any direct relation between the two epics), Olson began writing The Maximus Poems, a project that was to remain unfinished at the time of his death. An exploration of American history in the broadest sense, Maximus is also an epic of place, Massachusetts and specifically the city of Gloucester where Olson had settled. Dogtown, the wild, rock-strewn centre of Cape Ann, next to Gloucester, is an important place in The Maximus Poems. (Olson used to write outside on a tree stump in Dogtown.) The whole work is also mediated through the voice of Maximus, based partly on Maximus of Tyre, an itinerant Greek philosopher, and partly on Olson himself. The final, unfinished volume imagines an ideal Gloucester in which communal values have replaced commercial ones.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

You may have heard these famous words - words that sum up the choice of the only honest direction we can take in our lives if we are going straight through the middle of them, without hypocrisy or pretense:

‘We must see life steadily and see it whole!’

The words were stated in the Victorian era in the book ‘Culture and Anarchy’ by Matthew Arnold.

Remember ‘Dover Beach’?

Sure you do!

Arnold there compared our stormy journey through this morally bleak modern life to walking on a dark plain that is filled with the confused shouts of warring, ignorant armies.

If we’re walking with him as we read, we know how hard it is to go straight up the middle without any of the too-convenient sidetracks that the many camp followers around this battle are hawking!

Charles Olson was just such a man who rallied to Arnold’s clarion call to steady, holistic clarity.

The great Robert Creeley, who knew Olson well at Black Mountain College, has edited his masterfully concrete writings into one great volume.

He says in his intro:

"In the early fifties Olson became Rector (of Black Mountain College, a countercultural centre for the Arts)…. Black Mountain proved a focal point for much significant activity in the arts - John Cage, Robert Duncan, Merce Cunningham, Franz Kline - show briefly the range and intensity of what was then happening."

The strong cross currents that later joined forces with the popular 60’s movements - which changed us all - had one of their birthplaces there.

And here is an excerpt from one of Olson's masterful poetic works, specially chosen by Creeley:

AS THE DEAD PREY ON US

O souls, burn
alive, burn now

that you may forever
have peace, have

what you crave

O souls,
go into everything,
let not one knot pass
through your fingers

let not any they tell you
you must sleep as the net
comes through your authentic hands

What passes
is what is, what shall be, what has
been, what hell and heaven is,
is earth to be rent, to shoot you
through the screen of flame which each knot
hides as all knots are a wall ready
to be shot open by you

the nets of being
are only eternal if you sleep as your hands
ought to be busy. Method, method

I too call on you to come
to the aid of all men, to women most
who know most, to women to tell
Men to awake. Awake, men,
awake
***

Did that manage to wake you?

Olson’s shock tactics work every time.

If you read Olson, you’ll agree...

These are Works of Rare Genius.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The trouble is, it is very difficult, to be both a poet, and a historian.

Olson has lumbered about me for years now. His hulking shadow was difficult to ignore. Perhaps my hubris was hollow or perhaps I was hopeful for momentum? My confidence has again dipped perhaps as a result of Olson’s Mayan Letters--which should have been momentous but struck me with a less resounding knell. The excerpts from the Maximus Poems were beguiling but my pulse appears calm. Olson on Shakespeare was excellent, recalling perhaps Berryman but with a nod closer to his own orientation: Melville and Parkman.

[Kitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful introduction to Olson, Black Mountain school. It allowed me to re-read Projective Verse (the only major piece I knew before this book) in a larger context. Each portion gives a different flavor of Olson. I was particularly interested in Apollonius of Tyana, having seen the dance performance. Indeed, "men spring up like violets when they are needed" -- and Olson did, in his time, to challenge the times.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know his prose is historically important, but I prefer him in verse, the selections of which are good here, but sparse.

[Stuart Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd have liked this even more if Creely had scrapped Apollonius of Tyana and put more poetry in its place.

[noah]

The first section-- awesome, planar, dynamical writing by someone with a deep admiration for the law of conservation of matter. The fifth section-- lovely poems, mostly nautical, a little demented. The middle i don't care so much. A bit European.

'no such many as mass, there are only
eyes in all heads,
to be looked out of.'

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[David Garza · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is an excellent survey of Olson's work up to 1966. Covers both prose and poetry. All the "hits" are included.

[Amber Manning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really good, especially "Projective Verse". Mayan letters not so good, very fetishizing.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Projective Verse" -- Chuck brings the heat.

[Peter Prokopiev · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, an unsatisfactory volume. I will look for the Olson reader and hope for a better selection.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a certain point I ended up with two copies of this book, which were almost enough...