Description
Book SynopsisRe-situating Olson’s work in relation both to his own moment and to current concerns, the essays assembled in Contemporary Olson provide a major re-assessment of his place in postwar poetry and culture.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Contemporary Olson – David Herd
Section I: Knowledge
1. Myth and document in Charles Olson's Maximus Poems – Miriam Nichols
2. Discoverable unknowns: Olson’s lifelong preoccupation with the sciences – Peter Middleton
3. ‘Empty Air’: Charles Olson’s cosmology – Reitha Pattison
4. A reading of ‘In Cold Hell, In Thicket’ – Ian Brinton and Michael Grant
Section II: Poetics
5. From Olson’s breath to Spicer’s gait: spacing, pacing, phonemes – Daniel Katz
6. Poetic instruction – Michael Kindellan
7. Reading Blackburn reading Olson: Paul Blackburn reads Olson’s ‘Maximus, to Gloucester: Letter 15’ – Simon Smith
8. From Weymouth back: Olson’s British contacts, travels and legacy – Gavin Selerie
9. A fresh look at Olson – Elaine Feinstein
Section III: Gender
10. Olson and his Maximus Poems – Rachel Blau DuPlessis
11. ‘When the attentions change’: Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff – Robert Hampson
12. ‘The pictorial handwriting of his dreams’: Charles Olson, Susan Howe, Redell Olsen – Will Montgomery
Section IV: History
13. The contemporaries: a reading of Charles Olson’s ‘The Lordly and Isolate Satyrs’ – Stephen Fredman
14. Futtocks – Anthony Mellors
15. Death in life: the past in ‘As the Dead Prey Upon Us’ – Ben Hickman
16. ‘To Gerhardt, There, Among Europe’s Things of Which He Has Written Us in His “Brief an Creeley und Olson’’’: Olson on history, in dialogue – Sarah Posman
17. ‘Moving among my particulars’: the ‘negative dialectics’ of The Maximus Poems – Tim Woods
18. A note on Charles Olson’s ‘The Kingfishers’ – Charles Bernstein
Section V: Space
19. Transcultural projectivism in Charles Olson’s ‘The Kingfishers’ and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri’s Warlugulong – Peter Minter
20. The view from Gloucester: Open Field Poetics and the politics of movement – David Herd
21. Why Olson did ballet: the pedagogical avant-gardism of Massine – Karlien van den Beukel
22. On the back of the elephant: riding with Charles Olson – Iain Sinclair
Epilogue: Charles Olson’s first poem – Ralph Maud
Bibliography
Index
