Charles Olson - Böcker

Praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors, Charles Olson (1910-1970) was declared by William Carlos Williams to be "a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me." This complete edition brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968, and 1975) in an authoritative version.

For Charles Olson, letters were not only a daily means of communication with friends but were at the same time a vehicle for exploratory thought. In fact, many of Olson's finest works, including Projective Verse and the Maximus Poems, were formulated as letters. Olson's letters are important to an understanding of his definition of the postmodern, and through the play of mind exhibited here we recognize him as one of the vital thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume, edited and annotated by Ralph Maud, we see Olson at the height of his powers and also at his most human. Nearly 200 letters, selected from a known 3,000, demonstrate the wide range of Olson's interests and the depth of his concern for the future. Maud includes letters to friends and loved ones, job and grant applications, letters of recommendation, and Black Mountain College business letters, as well as correspondence illuminating Olson's poetics. As we read through the letters, which span the years from 1931, when Olson was an undergraduate, to his death in 1970, a fascinating portrait of this complex poet and thinker emerges.

The prose writings of Charles Olson (1910-1970) have had a far-reaching and continuing impact on post-World War II American poetics. Olson's theories, which made explicit the principles of his own poetics and those of the Black Mountain poets, were instrumental in defining the sense of the postmodern in poetry and form the basis of most postwar free verse. "The Collected Prose" brings together in one volume the works published for the most part between 1946 and 1969, many of which are now out of print. A valuable companion to editions of Olson's poetry, the book backgrounds the poetics, preoccupations, and fascinations that underpin his great poems. Included are "Call Me Ishmael", a classic of American literary criticism; the influential essays "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe"; and essays, book reviews, and Olson's notes on his studies. In these pieces one can trace the development of his new science of man, called 'muthologos,' a radical mix of myth and phenomenology that Olson offered in opposition to the mechanistic discourse and rationalizing policy he associated with America's recent wars in Europe and Asia.Editors Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander offer helpful annotations throughout, and poet Robert Creeley, who enjoyed a long and mutually influential relationship with Olson, provides the book's introduction.

A seminal figure in post-World War II literature, Charles Olson (1910-1970) has helped define the postmodern sensibility. His poetry is marked by an almost limitless range of interest and extraordinary depth of feeling. Olson's themes are among the largest conceivable: empowering love, political responsibility, historical discovery and cultural reckoning, the wisdom of dreams and the transformation of consciousness - all carried in a voice both intimate and grand, American and timeless, impassioned and coolly demanding. Until recently, Olson's reputation as a major figure in American literature has rested primarily on his theoretical writings and his epic work, the "Maximus Poems". With "The Collected Poems" an even more impressive Olson emerges. This volume brings together all of Olson's work and extends the poetic accomplishment that influenced a generation. Charles Olson was praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors. He was declared by William Carlos Williams to be 'a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me.'His indispensable essays, "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe," and his study of "Melville, Call Me Ishmael", remain as fresh today as when they were written.

"I have assumed a great deal in the selection of the poems from such a large and various number, making them a discourse unavoidably my own as well as any Olson himself might have chosen to offer. I had finally no advice but the long held habit of our using one another, during his life, to act as a measure, a bearing, an unabashed response to what either might write or say". (Robert Creeley). A seminal figure in post-World War II literature, Charles Olson has helped define the postmodern sensibility. His poetry embraces themes of empowering love, political responsibility, the wisdom of dreams, the intellect as a unit of energy, the restoration of the archaic, and the transformation of consciousness - all carried in a voice both intimate and grand, American and timeless, impassioned and coolly demanding. In this selection of some 70 poems, Robert Creeley has sought to present a personal reading of Charles Olson's decisive and inimitable work - 'unequivocal instances of his genius' - over the many years of their friendship.

First published in 1947, this acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences--especially Shakespearean ones--on Herman Melville's writing of "Moby-Dick". Olson examines the influence of "King Lear" on Melville's work.

Charles Olson (1910-1970), described by William Carlos Williams as “a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world” and who, as Joel Oppenheimer once wrote, “brought two generations to life,” stood as a bridge between the first leaders of the modern movement, such as Pound and Stein, and some of the most important later innovators (Denise Levertov acclaimed his work “magnificent”). This landmark collection, first published in 1967 and edited by his long-time friend Robert Creeley, includes poems from Olson’s superlative book, The Distances, as well as from his epic Maximus Poems. Also included are the entirety of the “Mayan Letters,” written to Creeley while Olson was in the Yucatan studying Mayan hieroglyphs; “Appolonius of Tyana,” a background script for an original dance play; and his ground-breaking manifesto on “Projective Verse” as well as other essential essays.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 1.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 2.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 3.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 4.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 5.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 6.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 7.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 8.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 9.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.

Two great poets thinking through life and literature in an unequalled correspondence: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence: Volume 10.The ten-volume Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence is an enormously valuable, often thrilling, record of the friendship between two major poets, their greatest work largely still ahead of them both. Working out their thoughts in letters, Olson credited Creeley with formulating one of the basic principles of a new poetry: the idea that “form is never more than an extension of content.” But there was also the larger issue of how a man of language must live in the world.The correspondence covers periods when both men were unsettled—Creeley restlessly moving his young family around isolated Mediterranean villages, Olson drifting indecisively between conflicting roles as mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington, D.C. Throughout, however, there is an intense, single-minded dedication to poetry and the unique difficulties of putting into language the creative rhythms of conscious thought. This collection of uncommon richness will charm, challenge and inspire.