Collected Prose by Charles Olson, Benjamin Friedlander, Benjamin Friedlander, Donald M. Allen, Donald M. Allen

Product Details

Synopsis

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.

Library Journal

Poet and critic Olson wrote in a muscular style, one as individualistic as it is exasperating. Yet his writings changed the way literature is written and read: his essay "Projective Verse" gives a name to the poetry written by cummings, Pound, Williams, and other Moderns, and his book Call Me Ishmael tells more about the composition of Moby-Dick than any study before or since. That work and three other Olsen books, along with nine uncollected essays and five previously unpublished pieces, are brought together here by Allen, editor of the influential New American Poetry, 1945-1960, and Friedlander, a poet and doctoral candidate (SUNY at Buffalo). This work isn't easy reading, but for any serious student of the last 150 years of American letters, it is essential.David Kirby, Florida State Univ., Tallahassee

Biography

Donald Allen was a longtime friend, editor, and publisher of Charles Olson. He has also edited The New American Poetry, 1945-1960, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, and the writings of Lew Welch. He is currently CEO of Grey Fox Press in San Francisco. Benjamin Friedlander is the author of several books of poetry and editor of Area Lights Heights: Writings 1954-1989 by Larry Eigner. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the State University of New York, Buffalo. Robert Creeley is Samuel P. Capen Professor of Poetry and the Humanities at the State University of New York, Buffalo.