Selected Poems of Charles Olson - Hardcover

Olson, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520075285 ISBN 13: 9780520075283

Publisher: University of California Press, 1993

Synopsis

"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.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Olson (1910-1970) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. His first career was in politics, but he soon turned to writing and by the late Forties his work had received major attention. He was writing teacher and then rector at Black Mountain College, where Robert Creeley came to teach as well. Iconoclastic and controversial, Olson, along with Creeley, launched a postmodern, free-verse revolution, and his work opened new pathways in thought and language to a generation of dissident writers. Other volumes of Charles Olson's poetry are published by the University of California Press: The Maximus Poems (1983) and The Collected Poems of Charles Olson (1987).
Robert Creeley has long been an advocate of Charles Olson's work. Nine volumes of their correspondence have been published by Black Sparrow Press. The University of California Press publishes The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975 (1982), his Collected Prose (1988), Collected Essays (1989), and Selected Poems (1991).

Review

"Creeley's sure hand has caught . . . much of Olson's characteristic work. . . . The appearance of a sleek, intelligently honed selection of Olson's unwieldy oeuvre is reason to cheer. Steeped in a dream of its history and soil, Olson, along with William Carlos Williams, is the most American of this century's poets. At last we have the quintessential American format -- the portable (from which we can savor his rare agile brilliance." (Voice Literary Supplement

Added To %making A Republic
And Now Let All The Ships Come In
April Today Main Street
As Snow Lies On The Hill
As The Dead Prey Upon Us
At The Boundary Of The Mighty World
At Yorktown
The Blow Is Creation
The Boats' Lights In The Dawn Now Going So Swiftly The
Bottled Up For Days, Mostly
Celestial Evening, October 1967
The Chain Of Memory Is Resurrection
Chronicles
Cole's Island
Cross-legged, The Spider And The Web
The Death Of Europe (a Funeral Poem For Rainer M. Gerhardt)
The Distances
For Sappho, Back
Got Me Home, The Light
The Gulf Of Maine
Having Descried The Nation
The Heart Is A Clock
Hotel Steinplatz, Berlin, December 25 (1966)
The Hour Of Evening -- Supper Hour, For My Neighbors
I Have Been An Ability -- A Machine -- Up To
I Live Underneath
I Looked Up And Saw
Imbued %with The Light
John Burke
The Kingfishers
La Chute
The Lamp
A Later Note On Letter #15
The Librarian
Main Street %is Deserted, The Hills
Maximus Letter # Whatever
Maximus Of Gloucester
Maximus To Gloucester, Letter 27 (withheld)
Maximus To Himself June 1964
Maximus, At The Harbor
Maximus, From Dogtown - 1
Maximus, In Gloucester Sunday Lxv
Maximus, To Gloucester
Maximus, To Himself
May 31, 1961
Merce Of Egypt
The Moon Is The Number 18
Moonset, Gloucester, December 1, 1957, 1:58 Am
Move Over
A Newly Discovered 'homeric' Hymn (for Jane Harrison)
An Ode On Nativity
Out Of The Light Of Heaven The Flower
A Plantation A Beginning
The Ring Of
Some Good News
The Song
Stevens Song
The Telesphere
The Thing Was Moving
To Gerhardt ... Written Us In His Brief An Creeley Und Olson
The Twist
Variations Done For Gerald Van De Wiele: 1. Le Bonheur
Variations Done For Gerald Van De Wiele: 2. The Charge
Variations Done For Gerald Van De Wiele: 3. Spring
West Gloucester
When Do Poppies Bloom I Ask Myself, Stopping Again
Wholly Absorbed
-- Table of Poems from Poem FinderŪ

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0520075285
• ISBN 13: 9780520075283
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Creeley Robert