Charles Olson

Charles Olson, by Jonathan Williams, Black Mountain College, 1953


Charles Olson, by Jonathan Williams, Black Mountain College, 1953

Charles Olson (1910-1970) was an innovative poet and essayist whose work influenced numerous other writers during the 1950s and 1960s. In his influential essay on projective (or open) verse, Olson asserts that “a poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader. Okay. Then the poem itself must, at all points, be a high energy-construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge.” Form is only an extension of content and “right form, in any given poem, is the only and exclusively possible extension of content under hand. . . . I take it that PROJECTIVE VERSE teaches, is, this lesson, that that verse will only do in which a poet manages to register both the acquisitions of his ear and the pressures of his breath.” Olson goes by ear, and his lines are breath-conditioned. The two halves, he says, are: “the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE/the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE.” He believes “it is from the union of the mind and the ear that the syllable is born. But the syllable is only the first child of the incest of verse. . . . The other child is the LINE. . . . And the line comes (I swear it) from the breath. . . .” Robert Creeley explains thus: “What he is trying to say is that the heart is a basic instance not only of rhythm, but it is the base of the measure of rhythms for all men in the way heartbeat is like the metronome in their whole system. So that when he says the heart by way of the breath to the line, he is trying to say that it is in the line that the basic rhythmic scoring takes place. . . . Now, the head, the intelligence by way of the ear to the syllable—which he calls also ‘the king and pin’ – is the unit upon which all builds. The heart, then, stands, as the primary feeling term. The head, in contrast, is discriminating. It is discriminating by way of what it hears.” Olson believes that “in any given poem always, always one perception must must must MOVE, INSTANTER, ON ANOTHER!” So, all the conventions that “logic has forced on syntax must be broken open as quietly as must the too set feet of the old line.” –Source: The Poetry Foundation

Cosmology of Olson Lectures from PennSound : CHARLES OLSON RECORDED LECTURES

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