*****
...flight
(of the bird
o kylix, o
Antony of Padua
sweep low, o bless
the roofs,
*****
love is form, and cannot be without
important substance
*****
But that which matters, that which insists, that which will last,
that! o my people, where shall you find it, how, where, where shall you
listen
when all is become billboards, when, all, even silence, is spray-gunned?
*****
one loves only form,
and form only comes
into existence when
the thing is born
born of yourself,
*****
love is not easy
but how shall you know,
New England, now
that pejorocracy is here,
Olson, Charles.
"I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You." _The Columbia
Granger's World of Poetry._ December 3, 2007.
http://www.columbiagrangers.org.
Biography
Olson, Charles (1910–70)
Charles Olson, American critic and poet, was born in Worcester,
Massachusetts, and received his education at Harvard (B.A., 1932; M.A.,
1933). His literary reputation was established with / Call Me Ishmael /
(1947), a study of the influence of Shakespeare and other writers on
Melville's / Moby Dick./ In the
1950's, he became noted as a poet, a central figure of what is now known
as the Black Mountain School, which also included Robert Creeley, Denise
Levertov, and Robert Duncan. Olson wrote what he called projective
(open) verse, which he believed transmitted energy from the past to the
reader. His works include his lifetime poetry project, /The Maximus
Poems / (1960 and
1968), along with / Causal Mythology / (1969), and / Poetry and Truth /
(1971). His best known poem is "The Kingfishers"
, which opens with
the line "What does not change / is the will to change."
Bibliography:
Clark, Tom. / Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet's Life./New York:
Norton, 1991. Merrill, Thomas F. /The Poetry of Charles Olson: A
Primer./Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1982. Olson, Charles. /The
Maximus Poems./Ed. George Butterick. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1983. ———. /The Collected Poems of Charles Olson, Excluding the
Maximus Poems./ Ed. George Butterick. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987. Von Hallberg, Robert. /Charles Olson: The Scholar's
Art./Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978.
To cite this biography:
Biography of Charles Olson. _The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry._
December 3, 2007. http://www.columbiagrangers.org.
