- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; Reprint edition (Dec 1 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0520212320
- ISBN-13: 978-0520212329
- Product Dimensions: 15.6 x 20.4 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 318 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #780,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This judicious selection of Olson's poems will, one hopes, make him known to a wider audience. Poet Creeley's introduction aligns Olson's Maximus Poems with Pound's Cantos and Williams's Paterson , works which also, by their diverse forms and materials, prove too daunting for some. Creeley stresses Olson's political impulse, but the scale of Olson's poems seems more historical, if not cosmic. Raised in Worcester and Gloucester, Mass., here Olson looks back not only to the era of childhood and his parents' lives, but to the explorations of Captain John Smith, and the silent prehistory of the continent itself. The aim of this autobiographical-historical venture is not personal, Olson insists: "The only interesting thing / is if one can be / an image / of man." However, he recognizes that the effort to achieve a synthesis of the American consciousness and experience is forever displaced by a nation "which never / lets anyone / come to / shore," especially in an age when humans are "merely /something to be wrought, to be shaped, to be carved, for use, for / others." What is left is the severe beauty of memory and Olson's elegiac praise of life, "the precessions / of me, the generation of those facts / which are my words, it is coming / from all that I no longer am, yet am, / the slow westward motion of / more than I am."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Creeley offers a "uniquely cubist perspective, at once abstracting and distancing" (Memory Gardens, LJ 4/1/96).
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Charles Olson: "finding out for himself",
By Henry Shteamer (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
"History was "'istorin," which Olson took from Herodotus and used not as a noun or concept, but, rather, as a verb, "to find out for yourself." ---Robert Creeley, from his preface. Charles Olson is a poet of poignant searching. Throughout this volume, confidently compiled by Olson's longtime friend and correspondent, Robert Creeley, Olson seems to be finding out for himself what it is to be human. In the soliloquy poem, "Maximus, to himself" (taken from Olson's magnum opus, The Maximus Poems), Olson shows that this process involves the discussion of feelings of inadequacy. He describes the frustration of "[standing] estranged / from that which was most familiar," when "the sharpness (the achiote) / I note in others, / makes more sense / than my own distances." Here, Olson seems to want to attain a certain quickness of mind which he sees as an essential human characteristic. The qualities he admires in others are mixed, though, as when he says of Sappho (in "For Sappho, Back"): "with a bold / she looked on any man, / with a shy eye." Her power seems to come in her duality, her ability to appear both "bold" and "shy." This discussion of Sappho shows that Olson is concerned with the classical world, but he can also be an achingly banal poet as when, in "As the Dead Pray Upon Us," he remembers his dead mother, saying, "And if she sits in happiness the souls / who trouble her and me / will also rest. The automobile // has been hauled away." A truly great poet, Olson realized that the real history is that of the self, in all its foibles, contradictions, and blisses.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential, a quick look at a true genius,
By BRAINBEER@aol.com (Worcester MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
Charles Olson (1910-1970) was one of the most important American poets of the 20th Century. In this volume, Olson friend Robert Creeley has chosen most of the poems that I would have chosen for such a volume. He has included such works as "An Ode on Nativity" and "The Twist" which help celebrate the city of his birth and youth, Worcester MA. Creeley fairly evenly divides the book between choosing from The Collected Poems and The Maximus Poems. The only poem that is not in this excellent volume that I would have included is "Ferrini 1," Olson's tribute to his brilliant friend, Vincent Ferrini. Buy this book!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews) 8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Charles Olson: "finding out for himself",
By Henry Shteamer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
"History was "'istorin," which Olson took from Herodotus and used not as a noun or concept, but, rather, as a verb, "to find out for yourself." ---Robert Creeley, from his preface. Charles Olson is a poet of poignant searching. Throughout this volume, confidently compiled by Olson's longtime friend and correspondent, Robert Creeley, Olson seems to be finding out for himself what it is to be human. In the soliloquy poem, "Maximus, to himself" (taken from Olson's magnum opus, The Maximus Poems), Olson shows that this process involves the discussion of feelings of inadequacy. He describes the frustration of "[standing] estranged / from that which was most familiar," when "the sharpness (the achiote) / I note in others, / makes more sense / than my own distances." Here, Olson seems to want to attain a certain quickness of mind which he sees as an essential human characteristic. The qualities he admires in others are mixed, though, as when he says of Sappho (in "For Sappho, Back"): "with a bold / she looked on any man, / with a shy eye." Her power seems to come in her duality, her ability to appear both "bold" and "shy." This discussion of Sappho shows that Olson is concerned with the classical world, but he can also be an achingly banal poet as when, in "As the Dead Pray Upon Us," he remembers his dead mother, saying, "And if she sits in happiness the souls / who trouble her and me / will also rest. The automobile // has been hauled away." A truly great poet, Olson realized that the real history is that of the self, in all its foibles, contradictions, and blisses. 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The gentle giant,
By Davis-Vautrin - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
Although there are some, the adjectives are still few and far in between in Olson's verse. Remembering that the poet was a towering colossus of a man, the absence of such qualifiers seems like a purposeful holding back, a toning down of voice and volume to keep us unafraid. The short length of the lines may serve the same purpose, as does the sprinkling of indented stanzas, or the unfinished parentheticals, and other forms of play to alleviate the weight of heavy subjects. A towering colossus not only in physique, but truly one of the greats. There is out there in cyberspace a video clip of the poet in which, responding to an unknown comment, he says something like: "We need neither Vulcan nor Apollo, we need them like a hole in the head... [Pause]... We need only heaven and earth."
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential, a quick look at a true genius,
By BRAINBEER@aol.com - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Selected Poems (Paperback)
Charles Olson (1910-1970) was one of the most important American poets of the 20th Century. In this volume, Olson friend Robert Creeley has chosen most of the poems that I would have chosen for such a volume. He has included such works as "An Ode on Nativity" and "The Twist" which help celebrate the city of his birth and youth, Worcester MA. Creeley fairly evenly divides the book between choosing from The Collected Poems and The Maximus Poems. The only poem that is not in this excellent volume that I would have included is "Ferrini 1," Olson's tribute to his brilliant friend, Vincent Ferrini. Buy this book!
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