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
O.K. I'm running out of appetite. Let this swirl- a bit like Crab Nebula- do for now.
I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.
Not one death but many, not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is the law
love is form, and cannot be without important substance
The body whips the soul. In its great desire it demands the elixir In the roar of spring, transmutations.
what can we do when even the public conveyances sing? how can we go anywhere, even cross-town how get out of anywhere
what pudor pejorocracy affronts how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot what breeds where dirtiness is law what crawls below
by night only crazy things like the full moon and the whippoorwill and us, are busy.
The flowers are ravined by bees, the fruit blossoms are thrown to the ground, the wind the rain forces everything.
Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher will not indicate a favoring wind, or avert the thunderbolt.
My life has been given its orders: the seasons seize the soul and the body, and make mock of any dispersed effort. The hour of death is the only trespass
And all now is war where so lately there was peace, and the sweet brotherhood, the use of tilled fields.
The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.
There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe.