Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet's Life

by Tom Clark

An incandescent biography of the inventor of "projective" verse, this comprehensive portrait distinguishes the convivial, bluff public figure from the tormented inner man. A lapsed Catholic, Olson (1910-1970) turned to Sumerian myths, Mayan legends and Islamic mysticism for cosmic insights that would inform poems of cyclic sweep. Torn by contradictory feelings toward his proud, stern father—a Swedish immigrant postman in Worcester, Mass.—the poet found a father-figure in mentor Edward Dahlberg and later in Ezra Pound. Reclusive self-absorption sapped his two common law marriages; he harbored enormous guilt over his neglect of his two children and over second wife Betty Kaiser's death (in a car accident), which may have been self-inflicted during a severe depression. Clark, author of books on Kerouac, Celine and Ted Berrigan, reveals that Olson grappled with homosexual impulses, took hallucinogens and dominated those around him, seeking periodic release from inner demons in frenzied floods of images.

Genres: Poetry, Biography

432 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1991

About the author

Clark was an American poet, editor and biographer. Clark was educated at the University of Michigan and served as poetry editor of "The Paris Review" from 1963 to 1973 and published numerous volumes of poetry with Black Sparrow Press. His literary essays and reviews have appeared in "The New York Times," "Times Literary Supplement," and many other journals.

Reviews

[e · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm sure Ralph Maud's "riposte biography" is good (hell, I reviewed it and gave it a four!), but I wasn't being fair to this or Tom Clark then and I highly doubt I read this in full 11/12 years ago, because the objections that I had of it, that it "would have you believe that Olson is only one thing—namely, a sad, insecure, lonely alcoholic with chronic anhedonia," turn out to be exactly why it's such a page-turner of a literary biography. Watch Olson fuck his life up over & over again, commit admirably to dusting himself off and apologizing to others and learning, but just fundamentally not be able to follow through on. Does this "fictionalize events" like I claimed? I don't know, since I wasn't there (and it seems insane to claim authority on such matters), but I do know you can check Clark's sources and immediately see that they're all people close to Olson.

The bulk of the characterizations of Olson here as a "sad, insecure, lonely alcoholic w/chronic anhedonia" (or SILACA, for short) comes from Olson himself, and this was a crucial realization for me to have in rereading this. Clark consulted and directly quoted from Olson's journals, which Olson kept his entire adult life. The forward-facing image of Olson is as a bravura philosopher king (if not a drunken buffoon, in later life, post-Betty death), but all the while, the man is conflicted, uncertain, unable to live, constantly stealing time away from loved ones to draft his cosmogony, and rarely succeeding at it, in his own eyes. This is all stuff Olson is privately writing about himself, not Clark's projection, as Maud and others (including myself, years ago) want you to believe. Really, the major contribution to Olson studies that this makes is the emergence of Frances Boldereff, whose existence was a revelation when this biography was published. (Even Ralph Maud helped edit a volume of her/Olson's letters.) The Maximus Poems would not exist without her; for its opening salvo Olson rewrote one of his letters to her, & so the "you" in it, at least early on, is Boldereff, whose epistolary correspondence arguably kept the man alive for long stretches. And of course many of Olson's lines of inquiry descend from the things she would send him via letter.

I think when I was younger I simply resented this sort of demystification and looked at it as a tear-down. Clark clearly loves Olson's poetry, just not all of it, and doesn't make excuses for his (at times) terrible behavior. He was complicated, and Clark tries to provide all sides of the man, the relentlessly self-examining-&-castigating side evidenced in Olson's journals, the cold and emotionally distant side related by former family friends (Betty and Connie both being long gone), and the brilliant teacher and loyal friend so warmly remembered by any number of students and comrades decades later. When you read this after Ralph Maud's biography, number one, it succeeds as literature where Maud's doesn't (like I said, I was gripped by this thing!), where Maud gripes and contends every which way, & number two, you realize that Maud comes across as a bit of a sycophant, and way too old to be indulging in apologetics (the book was published as he approached 80).

Most 21st century poets familiar with Olson's work feel that he wrote some major poems, and some not-so-major poems. That's probably the measured response. Further measurements (and appreciation) will come down to the person, but I no longer feel that every jotting of the man deserves infinite patience. I appreciate that Clark labored so long to give us this, and not just hagiography. In the little cottage industry of Olson biographies this one sits at the top for me now. There are so many great anecdotes, again, where Maud couldn't be bothered—one that immediately comes to mind is Olson being confronted in a Buffalo townie bar by a drunken, belligerent Gregory Corso, who yelled in his face, "Gloucester is shit! Maximus is shit! You're shit, Olson!" and as the entire bar turned to see what would happen, Olson instead simply replied, "What do you want me to do? Change?"; there are probably 10-15 as good as this in the book's 350 pages. The Robert von Hallberg study (The Scholar's Art) presents a version of Olson I barely recognize and makes me loathe the guy. Charles Stein's examination of later Maximus through Jung and alchemical texts is penetrating but not high on insights into how Olson lived. Maud's Olson at the Harbor and Charles Olson's Reading do accomplish what they set out to do, but the reach and interest is just so small. The simple fact is that von Hallberg and Maud are both academics, and their work is for that crowd. Their hermeneutics may be brilliant, but they remain that and that alone. Tom Clark is a poet and has a poet's understanding of how events & people came to pass in/through Olson's life—by that allegory he was constantly spinning, whether anyone liked it or not. Clark's book registers the maximal dimensions of the man, fraying edges and all. It's the one worth reading.

[Sofia Cimballa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very horrible to a number of women

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olson was a giant (six-eight or so) bundle of contradictions. Intellectually and poetically courageous, his pursuits into the ancient mysteries and towards a more sanctified, whole and wondrous mode of life through the living word are easy for me to identify with. But he was such a moral failure, at times close to a psychotic-myopic disregard of others' feelings and pursuits. Really also a helpless child in regard to matters of basic humanness and also practical living - eg, he simply never learned to cook ANYTHING for himself, oppressively relying on his various lovers to do this and everything we associate with maintaining things.

I was glad to read this book, to get a few spots of Olson's intellectual trails illuminated, but I felt myself getting depressed when well into the book, like Olson's own badness and craziness were pervading the atmosphere. But, then, his Maximus and other poems are there for us, beautiful in themselves.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom Field has done a comprehensive job of covering Olson's life from cradle to grave.

I enjoyed it and I was certainly gripped by the narrative of the life, which helped me to understand the Maximus poems on a second read-through. I am not so sure about Field's opinions of Olson, however, which he lets through with some heavy-handed psychologizing that Olson himself would have ripped to pieces. His own poems about his father are like cannons against pistol-fire potshotting in this respect.

Some people dismiss Olson altogether and he does not find space in many anthologies but, in spite of all his failings, there is a moral greatness to him and his vision that uplifts. Even though he died poor and alone. Even though he did not have the wordly success he might have. Or perhaps because of that. I find it magnificent that he took reading and people seriously to the extent that he did.

I wish I could have known him.

[Harvey Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb, detailed, slightly unsettling. This biography prompted me to write the following poem included in my book Moonshot;

olson was


olson was
tired he
had talked
at max. speed
at max. vol.
all night
on whiskey
& speed
w/ camel
in mouth
pencil in hand
to the faded
Gloucester map
the lined paper
the dark window

that automatic
rental car
you drive
down the black mountain
of your all-night
rambling highs at
60mph to slow
to a peyote crawl
daytime low you sure
that the destination’s
worth the ride?
asked creeley

light snow
falls on
his pressed
italian suit
the men look
down at maximus
allen fumbles
his respects
accidentally triggers
the coffin-release
olson falls
head down
to his last
interminable
reading

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

a sad book, olson comes out of it looking small and pathetic for all his vastnesses. incapable of taking care of himself and entirely reliant on others while offering nothing in return. the blurb promises more in-depth readings of olson's thought, the effect on him of belief, the possible homosexual tendencies, when in fact these are hardly glanced at and it's mostly a rote "this happened and then this" record of the day-to-day, and how many of us would come out of that looking well?

[barry]

I've tried to get lost in the Maximus Poems a great number of times. Olson's irascibility, his reputation, Gloucester Massachusetts, the peculiar shorthanded grammar, the evocative mythology, the blue-collar immediacy-- it all adds up, I think, to the ultimate work of literature for me. But, I just get flummoxed. Fascinated, exhiliarated, but flummoxed all the same.

So, I'm about to embark on reading about Olson rather than reading his work itself. I'm hoping to be hooked and gain some insight I can apply to another attempt at Mount Maximus.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was just looking back on the Clark research into Olson's participation in the Merce Cunningham performances of 1953; Clark's got nothing. Fielding Dawson talked to Clark about it, but Clark didn't talk to Cage, Cunningham, or any of the dancers involved. Clark psychologizes everything, but really, Olson was a new daddy and how into that one-upsmanship with Cage would he have been?