Selected Poems of Charles Olson

Charles Olson, Robert Creeley

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520075283
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520920422
• 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.
"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