Projective Verse (Paperback)

The first independent book publication of “ the essay that changed American poetry” is reintroduced with new perspectives on its ongoing significance by six critics and poets. ” Postmodern poetics begins with Olson’ s seminal essay “ Projective Verse” (1950, 1955) and this urgent and remarkable statement of poetics continues to influence new generations of poets with its bold, dynamic, and energetic rush of provocative ideas about how a poet lives and writes in a postmodern world.” (John Faulise, PhD).

Charles John Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modernist American poet who was a link between earlier modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the third generation modernist New American poets. The latter includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, and some of the artists and poets associated with the Beat generation and the San Francisco Renaissance. Today, Olson is generally considered a key figure in moving American poetry from modernism to postmodernism. Ammiel Alcalay, poet, novelist, translator, critic, and scholar, is the author, co-author or translator of over thirty books, including After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture, a little history, Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays, 1982-1999, Semezdin Mehmedinovic’ s Sarajevo Blues, and Faraj Bayrakdar’ s co-translated A Dove in Free Flight. The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, recognized in 2017 with a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award. At the CUNY Queens Graduate Center, Alcalay is a member of various faculties. He was named Distinguished Professor in 2023. Miriam Nichols is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at the University of the Fraser Valley where she taught literary theory, Canadian and American literature, and international modernism. Her publications include scholarly editions of the poet Robin Blaser’ s  The Fire: Collected Essays  and  The  Holy Forest: Collected Poems  (University of California Press, 2006) and The Astonishment Tapes (University of Ala-bama, 2015). She is the author of Radical Affections: Essays on the Poetics of Outside  (Alabama, 2010). She currently works for Harbour Publishing in Madeira Park in B.C. Robert Kelly was born in 1935 in Brooklyn. He has published scores of books of poetry, fiction, and essays. He has taught at many universities, but mostly, and for 60 years, at Bard College. His most recent books are the collection  Linden Word, the experimental series  Listening Through, and  Symphonies. A new collection,  Metalogues, is forthcoming from Station Hill. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife, the French translator Charlotte Mandell. Michael Boughn is the author of  Measure’ s Measures— Poetry and Knowledge  (Station Hill, 2024),  and several books of poetry, including  Cosmographia— A Post-Lucretian Faux Micro-Epic,  Hermetic Divagations— After H.D., City— A Poem from the End of the World,  and  The Book of Uncertain— A Hyperbiographical User’ s Manual, Books 1 & 2. He was co-editor of Robert Duncan’ s  The H.D. Book,  and from 2016 to 2020 together with Kent Johnson produced the online Temporary Autonomous Zone known as  Dispatches from the Poetry Wars. Ed Sanders moved to NYC in 1958. His accomplishments include; opening Peace Eye bookstore, launching the magazine, Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts, founding the still performing rock band, The Fugs, founding the Investigative Poetry movement, writing a history of USAmerica in verse, helping levitate the Pentagon in protest against the war in Viet Nam. In recognition of his work, Sanders has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Book Award, and an Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He lives in Woodstock, NY with his wife, writer and artist Miriam Sanders. George Quasha, poet, artist, and writer explores certain principles (e.g., axiality, ecoproprioception) in various mediums. His work is discussed in Zero Point Poiesis: George Quasha’ s Axial Art (Aporeia, 2022) edited Burt Kimmelman, foreword Jerome McGann. His anthologies include America a Prophecy: A New Reading of American Poetry from Pre-Colombian Times to the Present. A Guggenheim Fellow, NEA Fellow, and recipient of the T-Space poetry award, he collaborates with artist Susan Quasha, with whom he is also co-publisher of Station Hill Press in Barrytown, NY. Charles Stein is the author of thirteen books of poetry including From Mimir’ s Head: Poems from theforestforthetrees (