Charles Olson was one of the most influential of the “New American Poets” published by Grove Press in the mid-twentieth century.

 

Synthesizing the experimental avant-garde of Black Mountain College with the uncompromising existentialism of the Beat Generation, the new structuralism of the San Francisco Renaissance, and heralding the postmodern deconstructionism of the LANGUAGE poets, his spirit, mind and intellect are ubiquitous in late twentieth century poetry around the world. He unearthed classical sources and aboriginal, principally Mayan, cultures within the history of European colonialism and insisted that the public value the human imagination as inseparable from the particulars of both the time and place of its origin.

 

With Charles Olson at the Harbor, Dr. Ralph Maud, a long time Olson scholar, sets the record straight, insisting that Olson was as careful with his genius as any young man could be; that he achieved critical success as a Melville scholar; that his “projective verse” established an undeniable and lasting sea change in poetic thought around the world; and that he eschewed success of the ordinary kind to create a new restorative stance in the polis that can take us into a different future—all reflected in a large body of poetry that the world can no longer ignore.

Ralph Maud, a world-renowned expert on the work of Dylan Thomas, Charles Olson, and the ethnographers of the Pacific Northwest, is professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University.

 

Charles Olson was a giant of a man in physical stature, critical and intellectual range, and imaginative power. His masterwork The Maximus Poems stands beside Ezra Pound’s The Cantos as one of the two great American long poems of the twentieth century—indeed, it can be seen as a democratic and relativist response to Pound’s fascist and absolutist manifesto. His boundless energy, penetrating curiosity and limitless dedication to his craft made Olson and his work the syncretic center of the evolving discourse of mid-twentieth century poetics in English.

Charles Olson was one of the most influential of the “New American Poets” published by Grove Press in the mid-twentieth century.

 

Synthesizing the experimental avant-garde of Black Mountain College with the uncompromising existentialism of the Beat Generation, the new structuralism of the San Francisco Renaissance, and heralding the postmodern deconstructionism of the LANGUAGE poets, his spirit, mind and intellect are ubiquitous in late twentieth century poetry around the world. He unearthed classical sources and aboriginal, principally Mayan, cultures within the history of European colonialism and insisted that the public value the human imagination as inseparable from the particulars of both the time and place of its origin.

 

With Charles Olson at the Harbor, Dr. Ralph Maud, a long time Olson scholar, sets the record straight, insisting that Olson was as careful with his genius as any young man could be; that he achieved critical success as a Melville scholar; that his “projective verse” established an undeniable and lasting sea change in poetic thought around the world; and that he eschewed success of the ordinary kind to create a new restorative stance in the polis that can take us into a different future—all reflected in a large body of poetry that the world can no longer ignore.

Imprint: Talonbooks
Distributor: Chicago Distribution Center
Publication Date: 05-15-2008
Pages: 224
Measurements: 9.00in X 6.00in