Product Description

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 consciousnessall 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #691734 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 609 pages

From Library Journal
Perhaps the most important American postmodernist poet, Olson was little published during his life. This work, excluding only The Maximus Poems, should solidify his reputation. Olson burst into poetry in his maturity, sure of his instincts. Though his debt to Pound is evident, he went further in exploring both American language and experience. What amazes us now is not just the profundity and erudition of his themes but the variety of ways he expresses his humanity. Ceaselessly experimental, his poems do not lose their intelligence or intelligibility. They also serve to show how trivialized poetry has become since his death. Ivan Arguelles, Univ. of California, Berkeley, Lib.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Egotist
Elegy
17th Century Men %who Founded This Land
2 Propositions And 3 Proof
A 2nd Musical Form, For Dave Young
Absolutely Vernal
Abstract #1, Yucatan
Abt The Dead He Sd
Across Space And Time
Adamo Me ...
The Advantage
Afica
Afternoon
All Haven Astern
All Pink From The Bath She Slept
All Things Stand Out Against The Sky
All You Can Do
The Allegory Of Wealth
The Americans
The Americans
Anecdotes Of The Late War
Anniversary
Anubis Will Stare
Applause
As I Went In And Out I Heard Pieces
As If Hallam Movius
As Of Bozeman
As Snow Lies On The Hill
As The Dead Prey Upon Us
As The Shield Goddess, Mycenae
As Though There Were No Flowing
Assuming The Soul Is A Bitch
Asymptotes
At Midnight, After Hours Of Love, I Ate
At Yorktown The Church
Atalanta Ran Swift Course
A B C's
A B C's Ii
A B C's Iii
The Babe
Bagatto
Ballad For Americans
Barley Or Rye
Beauty %is To Lay Hold Of Love
Being Altogether Literal, & Specific ... Explicit
A Big Fat Fly
Bigmans
Bigmans Ii
The Binnacle
Birth's Obituary
Black Mt. College Has A Few Words For A Visitor
The Boat
Borne Down By The Inability To Lift The Heaviness
The Bride
Buffalo Ode
Burial Groudn
The Business
By Cure Of - Sulfa
Canto One Hundred And One
Carrying Water To The Youth ...
The Cause, The Cause
The Chain Of Memory Is Resurrection
Christmas
Cinos
The Civil War
The Clouds
The Collected Poems Of
Color Is Image
Common Place
The Company Of Men
Compleynt Blossoms April To July
Concerning Exaggeration, Or How, Properly, To Heap Up
The Connection
Conqueror
Conqueror
A Constance, This Day
Conversation Galante
Cross-legged, The Spider And The Web
Cry Pain, & The Dogs Of Yrself Devour
Da Boyg
The Dance, Of The Grizzly Bear
Day Song
Day Song, The Day After
De Los Cantares
The Death Of Europe (a Funeral Poem For Rainer M. Gerhardt)
Diaries Of Death
A Discrete Gloss
The Disposition
The Distances
The Dogwood Comes Out Yellow
Double, Double, Root And Branch
The Dragon-fly
Dramatis Personae
The Drum World
The Dry Ode
Dura
Dylan Thomas, And Now Matthew Mead ... 'to Edward Thomas'
Easter
The Encounter
The End Of The World %is The Turn-about
Enniscorthy Suite
An Enthusiasm
Epigon
Epigraph To Call Me Ishmael
Every Man His Own Matador; ... Any Member Of The Family
Evil: 1
Evil: 2
Evil: 3
Evil: 4
Examples - For Richard Bridgeman
Fable For Slumber
The Fathers
February 10, One Year Too Late
Ferrini - I
Fire Is
A Fish Is The Flower Of Water
The Flower Grows %from The Roots
The Fool
For A Lady Of Whom I Speak
For A Man Gone To Stuttgart Who Left An Automobile Behind
For Cy Twombly Faced With His First Chicago & N.y. Shows
For Mac Hammond
For My Friend
For Sappho, Back
Friday, Good Friday
The Friend
From The Inca
The Gate Is Prouti
A Gloss
Go %make A Bridge
Going From Battle To Battle
The Gonfalon Raised Tonight
The Grandfather-father Poem
The Green Man
Grinning Monster Out Side The System
Hate
He %in The Dark Stall
He Is The Devil
He Treads On Edges Of Being Where The Drop
He, Who, In His Abandoned Infancy, Spoke To Jesus ...
Hear My Prayer My Father
The Heart Is A Clock
Help Me, Venus, You Who Led Me On
Her Dream, Half Remembered
Her Skin %covered Me
Here I Am, Naked
His House %in The Branches
The House
How Things Change
The Hustings
The Hustings
Hymn To Proserpine
Hymn To The Word
I Am So Small You Can Harldy See Me
I Believe In You
I Had Had %a Beetle
I Hang On By
I Just Passed %a Swoony Time
I Mean, No
I Met My Angel Last Night
I Saw, From Under Him
I Was Stretched Out On The Earth
I Weep, Fountain Of Jazer
I'm With You
I, Mencius, Pupil Of Them Master
Igor Stravinsky
In An Automotive Store
In Celebration Of Mitos
In Cold Hell, In Thicket
In One Age Or Other
In The Hills South Of Capernaum, Port
In Wiro Language
Inadequate Orderly Simplification ... Arbitrary Constants
Incunabula, 1958
Indian Trinity And My Son An Etchimin
The Intended Angle Of Vision Is From My Kitchen
Issue, Mood
Issues From The Hand Of God
It Is A Nation Of Nothing But Poetry
It Isn't My Word But My Mother's
It's Got To This
It's Not %the Erotic
It's Spring Again!
Jas Jargon
Just Inside The Vigil Of Christmas
The K
Key West
Kin
King Of The Wood King Of The Dead
King's Mountain
The Kingfishers
Knowing All Ways, Including The Transposition Of Continents
La Chute
La Cuute Ii
La Cuute Iii
La Preface
La Torre
Lalage!
The Lamp
Landscape, Without Color
The Laughing Ones
Law
The Leader
Letter For Melville 1951
Li Po
The Librarian
The Lie Of 10, Or The Concept Of Zero
Like A Foldout
A Lion Upon The Floor
The Liturgical %eighth Day
Long Distance
Love
Love I
Love Is The Talk
The Love Of Anat, I
Lower Field - Enniscorthy
A Lustrum For You, E.p.
Marry The Marrow
The Mast
The Mathematical Secret, And The Apron
May 20, 1959
May 31, 1961
Maya Against Itzas
Mazdaism %has Overcome %the World
Measure A Vessel Blatting
Memorial Day Flowers
Memory, Mind, And Will
Men Are Only Known In Memory
Merce Of Egypt
The Mind's Notice
A Mirko, Knoedler, 1948
The Moebius Strip
The Moon Is The Number 18
Moonset, Gloucester, December 1, 1957, 1:58 Am
The Morning News
The Motion
Move Over
The Muse %is The 'fate' Of The Poem
My Apple Branch
My Belly %sounds Like An Owl
My Love Is Also %like
My Poor Dumb Body
Name-day Night
The Nerves Are Staves, & When The Tears Come There Is Voice
New England March
New Poem
A Newly Discovered 'homeric' Hymn (for Jane Harrison)
The Night
Not A Rat-hole, A Cat-hole
Not To Permit Himself
O'ryan: 1
O'ryan: 10
O'ryan: 11
O'ryan: 12
O'ryan: 13
O'ryan: 14
O'ryan: 15
O'ryan: 2
O'ryan: 3
O'ryan: 4
O'ryan: 5
O'ryan: 6
O'ryan: 7
O'ryan: 8
O'ryan: 9
Obit
The Objects
An Ode On Nativity
Of Lady, Of Beauty, Of Stream
Of Mathilde
Of The United States
On All Sides
On The Equator East Of My Son
On The Shore
One Night Ma %lay With Pa
One Word As The Complete Poem
Only The Red Fox, Only The Crow
Other Than
Pacific Lament
A Part Of The Series On The Paths
The Pavement
The Pedens, Who Re-walked The Trails, Hobbyists
Pente Cost Under The Body Of The Gull Flying Directly
Peograms
The Perfume Of Flowers
The Perfume Of Flowers: A Haw
The Perfume Of Flowers: A Quince
The Personality And Dourness Of Winter
The Picture
Pitcher, How
A Po-sy, A Po-sy
Poemless Rhymes For The Times
The Post Virginal
Praises
A Promise
The Proper Soul %in The Proper Body
Psyche
Purgatory Blind
Put Him This Way
Quail
Quatrain
R(2)
The Range
The Real
The Red Fish-of-bones
Red Mallows
The Return
Right In My Eye
The Ring Of
Rosy, It Was
A Round & A Canon
Rufus Woodpecker Visited The President
Said Adam
Sans Name
A Scream To The Editor
The Sea %is An Archeology
The Seven Songs
Shang Dynasty Oracle Bone 2 Say
She
She Who Hits At Will
She, Thus
The She-bear
The She-bear Ii
Shenandoah
Shut In Kept Off
Siena
Signs
Sin Is Inferiority
Sing, Mister, Sing
Sit By The Window And Refuse
A Six Inch Chapter - In Verse
Small Birds, To Agree With The Leaves, Come In The Fall
The Snow Falls Eternally Down
Snow White Was Always Waiting
So The Norse %were Neurotic
Some Partial Cloudiness Will Flow Locally
The Song
The Song Of Ullikummi
The Soul
A Spring Song For Cagli
Stone And Flower Series
A Story
The Story Of An Olson, And Bad Thing
Sut Lovingood
Tanto E Amara
Tenementy Twilightish Landscape
The' Alba
There Are Sound, But Can Immoralists
There Is No River Which Is Called Lethe
There They Were
There Was A Youth Whose Name Was Thomas Granger
These Days
The Thing Was Moving
This
This Man's Weakness Is Straw
This Year
Thoughts Of The Time
Thy Gleeman Who Flattered Thee
To A Poet Who Read In Gloucester ... Scientific Society
To Empty The Mind
To Gerhardt ... Written Us In His Brief An Creeley Und Olson
To The Algae
To The She-bear
To Try To Get Down One Citizen As Against Another
Tomorrow
A Toss, For John Cage
The Town
A Translation
The Treatment
Trinacria
Troilus
True Numbers
Turn Now And Rise
Undazzled, Keen, %love Sits
Under Every Green Tree
The Unfinished (raw) Hero
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
War On The Mind In A Time Of Love
Well
West
West 6
What Had To Go
What's Wrong With Pindar
When One Age Goes With It Suddenly Its Errors Evaporate
White Horse
Who
Who Slays The Spanish Sun
The Whole World
The Will To
Will: Termite Mothers
Will: The Rat
Willie Francis And The Electric Chair
The Winds %which Blew My Daughter
The Winter After
Winter Solstice
With What I Got Out
Without The Season Of Structure, Modes Lie Like Gods ...
A Woman's Nipples Is The Rose Of The World
The Writ
The Writ
X To Zebra
The Year Is A Great Circle Of The Year Is A Great Mistake
The Yellow Of The Mask
You Know, Verse %is A Lovely Thing
You, Hart Crane
Your Eyes
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About the Author
George F. Butterick was the editor of the complete Maximus Poems and author of A Guide to the Maximus Poems (California, 1978). He served as Curator of the Literary Archives at the University of Connecticut, which houses Charles Olson's papers.

Customer Reviews

Bigmans' Big Book
This is one of the most unusual poetry books I've read. The poems Olson published in his lifetime were a fraction of what he wrote. In this volume, editor George Butterick interleafs nearly all the surviving typescripts with the poems from Olson's previously published collections, creating a giant single edition that runs to over 600 pages. On the plus side, you get the chance to discover a new Olson through reading his poems, most published here for the first time, in the order he wrote them. The downside is that the 'historical' Olson, who along with Allen Ginsberg electrified American outsider poetry in the '50s and '60s, tends to get choked off in all the false starts, toss-offs and unfinished fragments that few of his contemporaries ever saw. Since the notes at the end don't give the page numbers of the poems they refer to, it's a hassle to sort out which poems appeared in which collections, if any. Butterick's thirty-year care and feeding of Olson's work has to be one of the greatest editorial romances of all time, and his openness in letting you decide which poems are good or not is democratic. But it also demands a lot of unnecessary work (why not a separate section of unpublished poems?) that might leave you wondering if Olson's worth the effort. Robert Creeley's shorter "Selected Poems" are a better bet if you want a quicker overview, and Butterick's edition of the Maximus poems probably catches Olson at his best. But his risk in presenting Olson like this is true to the spirit of the poetry. An outsized book for an outsized man.