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"I have assumed a great deal in the selection of the poems from such a large and various number, making them a discourse unavoidably my own as well as any Olson himself might have chosen to offer. I had finally no advice but the long held habit of our using one another, during his life, to act as a measure, a bearing, an unabashed response to what either might write or say."--Robert Creeley
A seminal figure in post-World War II literature, Charles Olson has helped define the postmodern sensibility. His poetry embraces themes of empowering love, political responsibility, the wisdom of dreams, the intellect as a unit of energy, the restoration of the archaic, and the transformation of consciousness--all carried in a voice both intimate and grand, American and timeless, impassioned and coolly demanding.
In this selection of some 70 poems, Robert Creeley has sought to present a personal reading of Charles Olson's decisive and inimitable work--"unequivocal instances of his genius"--over the many years of their friendship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The gentle giant
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."

Charles Olson: "finding out for himself"
"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.

Essential, a quick look at a true genius
Charles Olson (1910-1970) was one of the most important American poets ofthe 20th Century. In this volume, Olson friend Robert Creeley has chosenmost of the poems that I would have chosen for such a volume. He hasincluded such works as "An Ode on Nativity" and "TheTwist" which help celebrate the city of his birth and youth, WorcesterMA. Creeley fairly evenly divides the book between choosing from TheCollected Poems and The Maximus Poems. The only poem that is not in thisexcellent volume that I would have included is "Ferrini 1,"Olson's tribute to his brilliant friend, Vincent Ferrini. Buy this book! ... Read more

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Praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors, Charles Olson (1910-1970) was declared by William Carlos Williams to be "a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me." This complete edition brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968, and 1975) in an authoritative version. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Charles Olson
if i told you where if first saw this poetry volume you won't believe me :-)

usually my attention to new or other authors comes from books or authors i've previously read or on occasion on a friend's recommendation. however, watching the movie "Bob Dylan: No Direction Home" on DVD i saw this book among a stack of papers on Izzy Young's desk during him being interviewed.

pageing through it at first glance one detects a couple of blank pages and one thinks 'whatta cheat?'. on scrutinizing the contents further one finds that Charles Olson not only wrote the poetry, but was also being very particular about the publication of his writings, and the setting up of the same.

i personal seem to prefer his later poetry writings. as an author he's completely new to me and finds his marked place among my modern american poets and writers.

JohPWilbrand

The masterpiece of a new poetic
This is mid twentieth century American EPIC poetry. It is not a collection of pretty little lyrics. If you want that, you came to the wrong place. It does have some lyric poetry embedded within, however. But for those who think all poetry should be lyrical, turn back now.

What is an epic? Pound said it was a poem with history. Olson disagrees. Olson visited Pound, argued with him, and Pound said Olson saved his life. But Olson disagreed with Pound on many issues. Pound was a Fascist, Olson was a Democrat. Pound sought to establish a sort of neo-Confucianism, while Olson's philosophy comes straight from Alfred North Whitehead (as well as Jung's psychology and other "new sciences of man"). Pound wanted to establish a cultural elite, while Olson seeks to establish the workers (in this case the fishermen) as the indomitable spirit of forward directed hard-boiled Yankee go-get-it-ism, if there really is such a thing, is spite of any doings by the self-styled elite, or mistaken directives from ship owners. As such, his epic is barbaric, and certainly dirty. Olson's epic has a main character. Aristotle suggested that definition about 2500 years ago.

Olson accepts the techniques of Pound, and he accepts the techniques of Williams in Paterson. Another reviewer mentions Zukofsky, but there really seems to be no such influence at work here. If the techniques of Pound are interesting to you, but you find his opinions repugnant, try this book. It is, in my opinion, the final success of all that modernistic attempt at redefining the epic we get from the above men.

Some reviewers here have shied away, citing naughty words or even difficulty. Can you imagine anyone writing a review to whine that something is difficult? What is that about? Some sort of glorification of ignorance? And the naughty words are by no means prevalent. PG-13 at best.

OK. I said this was a new poetic. I must explain. It begins with Whitman, of course, just writing what he darn well pleased. And it grew with William Carlos Williams who was in France as a teen and was exposed to the French poetry of the late 19th century. So Williams, like most people his age, had to react to Whitman, in light of that exposure to the French. The result was "Spring and All" in which Williams seeks new forms in the American language and tries to find poetry in the common barnyard objects, for instance. Meanwhile in Europe several friends of Williams come up with some silly rules (Imagism) to make lyrics seem new, and Pound writes them down and gets them published. Well, that didn't work because the minute one person states a rule, someone is inclined to break it. But Williams in Spring and All is not making rules. He's thinking out loud. This is where many discussions that include the two most important words (form and content) begin: in "Spring and All" in 1921. Twenty years later, Olson and Robert Creeley are young writers and, of course, they are discussing form and content and how they relate. The result, after several letters back and forth, is that form is an extension of content (Creeley) with Olson caveat, that (this may not be the exact wording) the best form is the most natural extension of content. And Olson wrote about this in an essay called Projective Verse, itself a poem from my point of view. Projective Verse then touches off several responses, as Olson had the minds of many young writers in his care during the existence of Black Mountain College. Over the next 20 years or so, many poets are affected by these theories, which are by them being labeled "postmodernism". Until finally it all came to a head in Vancouver, BC in 1962 when many of these poets gathered at a poetry conference and read their works. As one can see from the works read there, projective verse was in full swing. Again, it was not a set of rules. It was a discussion of where things come from and how to get them where they are going. The different writers who embraced these new ideas all wrote in totally different ways. If nobody ever said that Creeley, Blackburn, Duncan, Olson, etc. were all operating from the same idea of form and content, one might never be able to tell. If that isn't proof that an idea about form is solid, I don't know what is!

Olson actually began working on an epic in the 40s, but for some reason was unsatisfied. The remnants can be found in his first book of poems, "In Cold Hell, In Thicket" which was published around the same time as the first ten Maximus poems.

If, like me, you are an American Humanist, a student of Whitman, you wonder what's the great American poetry of the 20th century, and you really have no stomach for fascists and other elitists, this book is the end of your searching.

Don't sweat the fragmentary sentences. They make sense if you read it aloud. There are plenty of free audio recordings of Olson reading these Maximus poems on the net, so you can easily get his voice going in your ear. It is all very sensible, unless you were looking for some excuse to be thought better than other people. There's plenty of that out there, but not to be found in here. Here is where you get your hands dirty digging around in old cellar holes or boning fish on the line with old men listening to their stories, or listening to an old postman who has it from the widows up the hill that such-and-such happened. They don't speak grammatically correct English. They use, as Dante put it, de vulgaris loquentia, the common speech.

p.s. I realize that speech was Aristotle's defining characteristic of drama, but Olson makes it work in the epic.

Dear Dellaphon
A masterpiece (and an ample illustration of Gertrude Stein's answer to "why there are so few of them"). One wonders how Jacob Dellaphon (reviewer from RI) could manage to come away from his reading having allowed himself to LEARN absolutely nothing. Don't let any initial impressions of Olson's difficulty (or his pretention, or the pretention of some of his more zealous readers) steer you away from what he has WITNESSED. "Polis is eyes."

olson's maximus
"In the land of plenty, have
nothing to do with it"

olson was a large man & the maximus poems is some of what he got down on paper.

"he and I seeming
the only ones who know
what we are doing, where
we are going"

it is a big book that requires time and care of attention

it's also a reference, something that can be "dug up" to serve as signs or points.the lyric passages are often very low to the ground

"the forests,
behind, transparent
from the light snow showing
lost rocks and hills
which one doesn't, ordinarily,
know"

Relief for Insomniacs - The "Poetry" of Charles Olson
I was forced to read this dreck for an architecture(?) class.Although I love to read, and so usually approach unknown materials with an open mind, I quickly lost any illusion of interest once the first few pages were read.This "poem" is hard to follow, impossible to translate, boring to read.

Now if I could only find someone to take this book off of my hands. ... Read more

Product Description
The prose writings of Charles Olson (1910-1970) have had a far-reaching and continuing impact on post-World War II American poetics. Olson's theories, which made explicit the principles of his own poetics and those of the Black Mountain poets, were instrumental in defining the sense of the postmodern in poetry and form the basis of most postwar free verse.
The Collected Prose brings together in one volume the works published for the most part between 1946 and 1969, many of which are now out of print. A valuable companion to editions of Olson's poetry, the book backgrounds the poetics, preoccupations, and fascinations that underpin his great poems. Included are Call Me Ishmael, a classic of American literary criticism; the influential essays "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe"; and essays, book reviews, and Olson's notes on his studies. In these pieces one can trace the development of his new science of man, called "muthologos," a radical mix of myth and phenomenology that Olson offered in opposition to the mechanistic discourse and rationalizing policy he associated with America's recent wars in Europe and Asia.
Editors Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander offer helpful annotations throughout, and poet Robert Creeley, who enjoyed a long and mutually influential relationship with Olson, provides the book's introduction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Despite a bad design still a MARVEL of a book
Charles Olson is THE giant of post-war American poetry. Massive in every way - 6 foot 7 & a half inches tall, enormously influential as writer & teacher, a voracious reader, intense visionary, a mind second to none & a heart as big as the planet, his poetry & prose should be on every curriculum & syllabus in every school & university on the planet. What is so exciting about his work is that it proposes not just a new way of looking at things, but a new & vital way of engaging with life & destiny (ENERGY & INSTANT is how he put it) - "the poet is the only pedagogue left, to be trusted" - he teaches "man, that participant thing, to take up, straight, nature's, live nature's force". As you can see his prose is difficult & takes time to get used to - best to read it aloud & let its energy transform you as much as its meaning: energy transferral is how Olson saw communication & to receive energy you must first give it, & to bring energy from the page you must first bring it into the air in the act of speech: language for Olson was as much physical as mental - "I believe in God as fully physical" - & when you read Olson you feel yourself in the grip of energy - what he called the WILL TO COHERE - THE PROJECTIVE ACT - the very grip of LIFE, which flowed thru him with such intensity. His style is crucial to his message - FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT - which brings me to my only quibble with this book (& it's a major one) - its design. Olson was a real stickler for design - layout & typefaces were crucially important to him because they all contributed to the impact of the page on the reader, which is why I cannot understand the reason for the cool (the last word you'd ever call Olson - he was too hot even to get close to), sans serif, bland layout of the pages in this book. Olson often capitalises phrases - like he's shouting them at you - here they're barely a whisper. Is all I can think is that the book was designed by someone more familiar with fashion than with the contents - a big mistake I'm afraid because a lot of the power is lost. Anyway, that said, it is all here - Call Me Ishmael, Human Universe, Additional Prose & other snippets, & the photo on the cover is wonderful. As I see it, Olson's big mistake was not living a long enough life - not completing his work - not actually having the intelligence to see & feel his life as a complete entity - not actually having the heart (as Spinoza had) to realise that ENERGY & INSTANT are in fact, in essence, the same, & that if one lives a responsible life & looks after ones health because certain things can only be learnt at a certain age & one must live that long at least, then time is consumed & one comes to something real & godly which Olson never managed, despite the promise of the final poems. The archaeologist of morning died TOO young & I miss him. ... Read more

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For Charles Olson, letters were not only a daily means of communication with friends but were at the same time a vehicle for exploratory thought. In fact, many of Olson's finest works, including Projective Verse and the Maximus Poems, were formulated as letters. Olson's letters are important to an understanding of his definition of the postmodern, and through the play of mind exhibited here we recognize him as one of the vital thinkers of the twentieth century.

In this volume, edited and annotated by Ralph Maud, we see Olson at the height of his powers and also at his most human. Nearly 200 letters, selected from a known 3,000, demonstrate the wide range of Olson's interests and the depth of his concern for the future. Maud includes letters to friends and loved ones, job and grant applications, letters of recommendation, and Black Mountain College business letters, as well as correspondence illuminating Olson's poetics. As we read through the letters, which span the years from 1931, when Olson was an undergraduate, to his death in 1970, a fascinating portrait of this complex poet and thinker emerges. ... Read more

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A seminal figure in post-World War II literature, Charles Olson (1910-1970) has helped define the postmodern sensibility. His poetry is marked by an almost limitless range of interest and extraordinary depth of feeling. Olson's themes are among the largest conceivable: empowering love, political responsibility, historical discovery and cultural reckoning, the wisdom of dreams and the transformation of consciousnessall carried in a voice both intimate and grand, American and timeless, impassioned and coolly demanding. Until recently, Olson's reputation as a major figure in American literature has rested primarily on his theoretical writings and his epic work, the Maximus Poems. With The Collected Poems an even more impressive Olson emerges. This volume brings together all of Olson's work and extends the poetic accomplishment that influenced a generation. Charles Olson was praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors. He was declared by William Carlos Williams to be "a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me." His indispensable essays, "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe," and his study of Melville, Call Me Ishmael, remain as fresh today as when they were written. ... Read more

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Bigmans' Big Book
This is one of the most unusual poetry books I've read.The poems Olson published in his lifetime were a fraction of what he wrote.In this volume, editor George Butterick interleafs nearly all the surviving typescripts with the poems from Olson's previously published collections, creating a giant single edition that runs to over 600 pages.On the plus side, you get the chance to discover a new Olson through reading his poems, most published here for the first time, in the order he wrote them.The downside is that the 'historical' Olson, who along with Allen Ginsberg electrified American outsider poetry in the '50s and '60s, tends to get choked off in all the false starts, toss-offs and unfinished fragments that few of his contemporaries ever saw. Since the notes at the end don't give the page numbers of the poems they refer to, it's a hassle to sort out which poems appeared in which collections, if any.Butterick's thirty-year care and feeding of Olson's work has to be one of the greatest editorial romances of all time, and his openness in letting you decide which poems are good or not is democratic.But it also demands a lot of unnecessary work (why not a separate section of unpublished poems?) that might leave you wondering if Olson's worth the effort.Robert Creeley's shorter "Selected Poems" are a better bet if you want a quicker overview, and Butterick's edition of the Maximus poems probably catches Olson at his best.But his risk in presenting Olson like this is true to the spirit of the poetry.An outsized book for an outsized man. ... Read more

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astounding
Only Butterick and Creely could have demonstrated the significance that Charles Olson imparted upon the world of post-modern poetry.For those familiar and unfamiliar with the works of this poet, this collection,although only a mere smattering of the magnitude of Olson, provides animposing insight to the depth and mastery of modern poetry. ... Read more

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Picky, picky, picky.
While it is true that Clark's far from flawless biography of Olson portrays the man as rather a pathetic figure in many respects, and that that portrait is one that Maud's book seeks expressly to "correct," that correction or counterweight, such as it is, too often is undermined by the author's tone--which, where not ax-grindingly punctilious, is unapologetically agenda-driven--to be entirely persuasive.

The book reeks not only of scold (of Clark), but of santification (of Olson).

While Maud makes many good and necessary "corrections" of fact, context, and interpretation, he also makes so many gratuitously niggling and fault-findingly petty ones that his book stands less as the Corrective-to-Clark that he aspired to write, than as an Apologia-for-Olson. Every "correction" Maud makes, aside from those of simple fact, goes only to burnish Olson and burn Clark.

A little of this goes a long way.

Clearly, Maud believes that Clark's biography was written in "bad faith," that it was an act of so-called pathography. Perhaps it was, but IF it was, it was not, as any fair-minded reader of that book can attest, nearly as pathological as Maud would have one believe. As pathographies go, Clark's of Olson is pretty tame stuff.

That said, Maud's book SHOULD be read (alongside and after Clark's). It is a necessary book, if, at times, an insufferable one.

counter-biographical scholarship olson would have liked
This is Ralph Maud's long critique of the Tom Clark Olson bio. Not so much a biography itself, with only chronology in places to substitute for narrative. Rather each chapter begins with some nit Maud picks with Clark. Added all up, I've been fascinated, can't stop reading, as Maud would challenge all those who ever said a negative thing about Maud's hero. And we must admit that Clark was concerned to deliver Olson as pathography. I had for long accepted the view (gotten, come to think of it, from Clark) that Olson's work interested me much more than the person himself, but Maud's long sulk has me reconsidering. The sensibility behind the scholarly scruple with Clark is one with which we should be familiar from NYC publishers' bios: it was common, once upon a time, for the subject of a biography and the subject of an oeuvre to be regarded as worth one's time. Two different subjects, but worthy, taken as a whole, of critical biography. Maud's is not that. For example, not a word is expended on the meeting of Olson and Duncan in San Francisco in the late 40s. While Clark was concerned to deflate a figure within the poetry culture, Maud could surely produce a critical biography (i.e., he certainly understands his man), but would it be as interesting as this small press thing meant to fill a gap? Perhaps not. What limits Maud's "biography" rhetorically can be put down to distortions in the way knowledge is structured and commoditized in our present literary field. Meantime, I liked this book a whole lot.

Being There with Olson
The only full biography of Olson published to date, Tom Clark's Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet's Life, is a deeply flawed book, one that appears to have an axe to grind, one that interprets, it seems, everything in its ken in a way that reflects poorly on its subject. Ralph Maud's Charles Olson at the Harbor is a necessary corrective, pointing out not only alternative interpretations to Clark's, but showing where Clark has misquoted and taken things out of context and, either by intent or accident, has misrepresented the facts and emotions of Charles Olson's life. As well as a corrective to Clark, Maud's book is a great read in its own right, and one that provides an important window into Olson's poems as well. Maud is a generous and intelligent reader of Olson's work, and his analyses benefit from his deep understanding of Olson's humanity. Olson's work in general, and The Maximus Poems in particular, are as necessary to an understanding of late 20th Century American poetry and possibilities, as are the poems of Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition) to her moment in the mid-19th Century. Maud is an outstanding companion on the journey toward an understanding of Olson. ... Read more

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Narrative+scholarship=reference
Professor Maud's book provides welcome relief from sensationalist biography. By tracing Olson's reading, and thus establishing a chronological framework for the poet's thinking, Maud does not confuse with editorial and/or emotional bias. For readers unable to make the trip to the various archives of Olson's work around the US, this book is a valuable reference. The extensive notes provide a place for the interested scholar to get lost in for hours. Extensive and intensive if a little dry, this book is worth the read as a companion to Olson's work. ... Read more

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This edition represents the third year of correspondence between Creely and Olson; Creely is now roaming around the Mediterranean with his young family, and Olson is mentor at Black Mountain and writer in Washington. The letters reveal the intensity with which the two poets expressed themselves.Amazon.com Review
Whenever I become intrigued by a writer, I tend to readeverything I can get my hands on that he or she has written --including their letters.Correspondence presents the uniqueopportunity to become closer to your writer. The guard is down, thelanguage is conversational, the ideas fly by fresh and uncrafted bymonths of revisions. This collection of letters between two of thefamous Black Mountain poets bares their souls in everything fromwriter's block to religions to saving each other's lives through thenear-forgotten art of written correspondence. ... Read more

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Praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors, Charles Olson (1910-1970) was declared by William Carlos Williams to be "a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me." This complete edition brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968, and 1975) in an authoritative version. ... Read more

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Charles Olson (1910-1970) was a mass of contradictions - at once egalitarian and elitist, as desperate for the love of a devoted woman as he was haunted by homosexual urges, a lapsed Catholic who eventually drifted into Islamic mysticism and Sumerian studies. In this provocative biography of a poet both feared and revered, Tom Clark shows how these conflicts troubled Olson's life even as it fueled his art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

thoroughly readable portrait of an iconoclast
and by iconoclast its not possible to sugarcoat the very real personal destruction that olson wrought on everyone around him, though he was one of the most brilliant exponents of some of the very best strains of modernist poetry. as someone who has studied, admired, and been engaged with olson over the last two years, and his prophetic calls for "an earth of value", and "proprieception", among many other ideas that went way beyond theinventions and drug induced nihilism of the beats, clark's biography gave an insight in to the man's extremely complex relationship with everyone around him, and i mean everyone.yes olson was exploding off the page with ideas, but his attempts to live the ideas fell far short of his high flown naturalistic bent, and some of his behavior, both pre and post amphetamines, was frankly incredible; particularly his 5 years at black mountain, which although may have been doomed from the start, (an experimental college in mccarthyist america) it was still a testing ground for olson's "polis has eyes" that may have changed a lot in the postsecondary educ. system.a great insight in to a man that was brilliant, a visionary, and an inventor, but also apetty, misogynistic, brute of a man that sacrificed many people to the great altar of ideas. i've never read anything else by clark, but he seems to have a pretty thorough approach to biography that tells a story in a straightforward narrative with plenty of documentary evidence; also, having picked up the first edition in a used book store, the comments of robert duncan, haas, creely, and edward dorn on the back flap give credence the portrait that clark paints.highly recommended to anyone wanting to understand the man who "invented" postmodernism.

Choppy Life
Found the book to lead me on great imaginings.Certainly not a prettyportrait of the artist, but within a tight 352 pages a sound introductionto his work and psychic torment which shaped it.The book led me intodeeper investigations and further imaginings which is part of what a decentbiography should do.

A tour de force which has little to do with Olson or his art
The author belies a hostility towards his subject early on in the book by referring to him as "Charlie" as though he was the cop on "Bad Boys" who had caught the guy in the video who had obviouslydone something which gave him the right to speak condescendingly to him. In Clark's own mind Olson has become an unworthy father who he has to beatdown.Wierd !Totally misses the point of Olson's art which is that eachpage is different and a unique attempt at truth. Shows too how theThruway West (oh Gunslinger) has obliterated belief in an actual earth ofvalue. Which Olson's actual text does manage to keep alive. ... Read more

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First published in 1947, this acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences--especially Shakespearean ones--on Herman Melville's writing of "Moby-Dick". Olson examines the influence of "King Lear" on Melville's work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

More Melville research than Moby-Dick criticism
Charles Olson selected a snappy title for his book, but his elliptical writing style and the few interesting nuggets of knowledge that he offers up preclude a more enthusiastic recommendation. Another critic of Melville writes that, in Call Me Ishmael, Olson "rather enigmatically" relates Moby-Dick to the Osiris myth of ancient Egypt (one of the nuggets). Those who find this book more "lyrical" than elliptical and enigmatic, should read the section on Moby-Dick in Studies in Classic American Literature (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence). It, too, avoids the style of "stodgy dissertation," but is better written and predates Olson's work by 2 decades. Olson offers evidence from Melville's letters and writings that he initially wrote a more pedestrian whaling book for the mass market, then, inspired by Hawthorne and Shakespeare, transformed it over the course of a year into the poetic epic that we read today. Jean-Paul Sartre suspected this multi-stage development as he reviewed the French translation of Moby-Dick, and this supporting information is important to those interested in the author as well as the work. I found Olson's explanation of the Bulkington character most interesting, as his brief, but pointed, introduction and immediate fade to nothingness in Moby-Dick is itself enigmatic. After reading Call Me Ishmael you may want to move on to the compendium of criticism, Twentieth Century Interpretations of Moby-Dick: A Collection of Critical Essays (A Spectrum Book) (M.T.Gilmore, ed.). Gilmore includes the chapter "Captain Ahab and His Fool" from Call Me Ishmael (another nugget relating Ahab and Pip to Lear) but offers as well a wide range of other criticism, touching romantic symbolism, 19th century American technological sociology, biblical metaphor, and more.

Fans of Ahab will love this one
Or, if you have read and re-read the current bestseller Ahab's Wife, and you are looking for another classic treatment of the Moby Dick story not featured on Oprah Winfrey's daily chat show, you might pick up Olson's famous theoretical exposition of Melville.In 1947, Charles Olson hadn't written much poetry and he was just coming off a failed political career as a minor functionary in Roosevelt's New Deal, but somehow he got his act together with CALL ME ISHMAEL.Nowadays, everyone is in on the Melville revival but in the immediate postwar years Melville had only really been in the canon for twenty years or so, so Olson was working out something new and undone in American literature.His book didn't sell particularly well, it's challenging and high-toned, but it has remained in print continuously for almost 60 years.Let's see if AHAB'S WIFE can say the same!

Literary criticism becomes art
It should come as no surprise that the world's greatest novel would inspire the world's greatest essay of literary criticism. Sadly, Olson's ideas did not appeal to members of the elite Melville Society, and to this day they still consider him a "crank." A real pity, because Olson will be remembered long after they are forgotten.

You will seek the White Whale as Ahab did.
In brief, "Call Me Ishmael" is the most interesting piece of literary criticism I've ever read.Foreshadowing his future leanings as a poet, Olson writes "Ishmael" more like a prose poem than stodgydissertation.Yet, however unique the form, it seems strangelypredetermined.For it is only through a poetic nature that it coulddistill such huge, multilayered concepts into an accessible and short (119pg.) essay.This reissue--it was first published in 1947--takes the readerthrough Shakespearean influence on "Moby Dick," Melville'sstruggle with faith, and the importance of place--to name only threeexamples.The future rector of the short-lived, yet highly influential,Black Mountain College in North Carolina, creates an energy out of wordsbested only by "The Whale" itself.As Olson stated to hiscolleague, Merton Sealts, Jr., who wrote the new afterword to the essay: "I see that The White Death has descended upon You too."And itwill upon you as well.After reading this incisive, lyrical, and engagingpiece, you will want to return to "Moby Dick" before you'veclosed its pages. ... Read more

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Charles Olson (1910-70) believed that poetry exists in an 'open field' through which the poet transmits energy to the receptive reader. Olson's influence on the development of British and American poetry through his writing and teaching is immense. His work encompasses myth, history, scholarship and politics, grand theories and delight in the particular variousness of life, all marked by the curiosity and openness to experience that he asked of his readers. Olson grew up and returned to live in the seafaring town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and it was from the life and language of its citizens that his poetry drew its strengths. "The Reader" includes extracts from the full range of Olson's poetry and prose, including letters, interviews and the full text of the key essay 'Projective Verse'. Ralph Maud, a colleague of Olson's from 1963-5 and the editor of Olson's letters, has supplied an introduction, supporting illustrations, notes and bibliography to this essential resource. ... Read more