Selected Poems of Charles Olson

Charles Olson, Robert Creeley

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780520920422
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

"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. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.
"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 usi

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Move Over
• La Chute
• The Kingfishers
• At Yorktown
• In Cold Hell, in Thicket
• For Sappho, Back
• The Moon Is the Number 18
• To Gerhardt, There, Among Europe’s Things of Which He Has Written Us in His “Brief an Creeley und Olson"
• The Ring of
• An Ode on Nativity
• The Thing Was Moving
• Merce of Egypt
• The Death of Europe
• A Newly Discovered ‘Homeric’ Hymn
• As the Dead Prey Upon Us
• Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele
• The Librarian
• Moonset, Gloucester, December 1,1957,1:58 AM
• The Song
• The Distances
• Cross-Legged, the Spider and the Web
• May 31,1961
• The Lamp
• Maximus, to himself
• The Twist
• a Plantation a beginning
• Maximus, to Gloucester
• Some Good News
• John Burke
• April Today Main Street
• MAXIMUS, FROM DOGTOWN—I
• Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]
• Maximus Letter # whatever
• Maximus, at the Harbor
• A Later Note on
• CHRONICLES
• THE GULF OF MAINE
• West Gloucester
• Stevens song
• Maximus to himself June 1964
• COLE'S ISLAND
• Maximus, in Gloucester Sunday, LXV
• Maximus of Gloucester
• Got me home, the light snow gives the air, falling
• Hotel Steinplatz, Berlin, December 25 (1966)
• Celestial evening, October 1967
• The Telesphere
• INDEX OF FIRST LINES