Olson's Prose

Book excerpt: Author of The Maximus Poems, Rector of Black Mountain College, and quondam Democratic Party activist, Charles Olson is one of the central figures of mid-twentieth-century American poetry. Charles Olson: A Poetâ (TM)s Prose is the first book-length critical study to focus strictly on Olsonâ (TM)s prose, ranging from his groundbreaking study of Melville, Call Me Ishmael (1947), through such seminal work as â oeProjective Verseâ (1950), â oeHuman Universeâ (1951), The Special View of History (1956, 1970), â oeEqual, That Is, to the Real Itselfâ (1958), and Proprioception (1962). The eleven essays collected in this volume introduce a new generation of scholars who engage Olsonâ (TM)s thinking on gender and sexuality, human ecology, the relevance of non-Euclidean geometry and quantum physics for poetics, phenomenology and Whiteheadâ (TM)s process philosophy, and postmodernism. Olson thinks and writes against the grain of the established authorities in poetry and literary criticism, and his influence on American letters has been broad and varied. Like some Old Testament prophet or Melvilleâ (TM)s Ishmael, Olson projects a voice that is immediately distinctive, sometimes disturbing, always provocative, and often compelling. To begin to understand postmodern American poetry, one must begin with Charles Olson.