Charles Olson (1910-70) is credited with inventing the term 'post-modern'. Father of the Projectivist movement and one of the great teachers of his age, he is also one of its great poets, a writer whose work has had an abiding impact on radical currents of American and British poetry. The son of working-class immigrants, Olson grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, north of Boston, on the sea, and Gloucester is at the heart of his mature poetry. He studied at Harvard and, after working for the Roosevelt government during the war, taught at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. As rector of the college in the early 1950s he attracted creative artists and spearheaded the campaign against the New Criticism. A number of important artists and writers were associated with Black Mountain: De Kooning, Kline and Rauschenberg, John Cage, John Dewey. Robert Creeley's Black Mountain Review was an ambitious magazine. Poetry, Olson says, is an 'open field' through which the poet transfers energy to the reader - but only the reader who is prepared, and preparation involves opening the ear and clearing it of the conditionings of traditional verse and prejudices of preconception. 'Yes, yes, we must, must, must get rid of the drama, at all costs - I mean, even get rid of narrative - the temptation, you hear'? The source of the poem is the body and being of the poet, the poem should engage the body and being of the reader. This Reader draws on the full range of Olson's poetry. It includes extracts from his prose, including the essay on Projectivism, memoirs, letters and other vital material, and some key photographs.
CHARLES OLSON was born in 1910 in Worcester, Massachusetts and grew up in Gloucester, a seaport north of Boston. He studied at Harvard, and taught there for a time, before working for the Roosevelt government during the war. In 1948 he took a post at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, where as rector from 1951 to 1956 he was instrumental in attracting a circle of creative artists to the college. He later taught at the State University of New York, but continued to live in Gloucester, the setting of the Maximus Poems (1960-68). His important writings include his essay 'Projective Verse' (1950), which influenced Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley and others; In Cold Hell, In Thicket (1953); and his critical work Call Me Ishmael (1947). Charles Olson died in 1970. RALPH MAUD is Emeritus Professor of English and Associate of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. He is a major editor of the work of Dylan Thomas. He is also author of Charles Olson?s Reading: A Biography (1995), What Does Not Change: The Significance of Charles Olson?s ?The Kingfishers? (1997) and editor of The Selected Letters of Charles Olson (2000). He knew the poet from 1963 to 1965 when they were colleagues at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Introduction List of Abbreviations and References Prologue La Preface The Resistance (for Jean Riboud) II Parents The Post Office As the Dead Prey Upon Us III Projective Verse The Kingfishers Projective Verse IV Maximus (1): Polis Letter 3 The Songs of Maximus Letter 10 Capt Christopher Levett (of York) Maximus to Gloucester, Letter In Thicket La Chute In Cold Hell, in Thicket The Ring of VI Outside the Box The Gate & the Center from Mayan Letters To Gerhardt, There, Among Europe's Things... Human Universe Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele VII Maximus (2): Cosmology Letter 41 MAXIMUS, FROM DOGTOW - I MAXIMUS, FROM DOGTOWN - II The Poimanderes I forced the calm grey waters A Maximus Song Maximus, at the Harbor A Later Note on / Letter 15 'View': fr the Orontes / fr where Typhon after the storm was over 3rd letter on Georges, unwritten to enter into their bodies The Cow of Dogtown Gylfaginning VI All night long [MAXIMUS, FROM DOGTOWN - IV] VIII Causal Mythology from Causal Mythology IX Maximus (3): Earthly Paradise having descried the nation Maximus to himself June 1964 Cole's Island Maximus of Gloucester [to get the rituals straight Celestial evening, October 1967 * Added to making a Republic I'm going to hate to leave this Earthly Paradise The first of morning was always over there I live underneath the light of day Appendix: 'Maximus, to himself' TYRE from 'Paris Review Interview' Notes
