Charles Olson
Charles Olson
Charles Olsonwas a second generation American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Consequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of the language school, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure. He described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as "an archeologist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 December 1910
CountryUnited States of America
I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.
You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble
I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.
Were all moving, moving, moving. Isnt it nice?
I'm sorry, but I was born with a towel on my head.
I was playing catch with the European audience.
I take space to be the central fact to man born in America. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large and without mercy.
Fact is based upon vulgar matter.
what can we do when even the public conveyances sing? how can we go anywhere, even cross-town how get out of anywhere
love is form, and cannot be without important substance
Not one death but many, not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is the law
what pudor pejorocracy affronts how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot what breeds where dirtiness is law what crawls below
The body whips the soul. In its great desire it demands the elixir In the roar of spring, transmutations.
by night only crazy things like the full moon and the whippoorwill and us, are busy.