112 Pages
©2011
Publisher: Cuneiform Press
Purchase includes: PDF

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Edited with an introduction by Kyle Schlesinger. Foreword by Basil King. In the spring of 1962, poet Charles Olson descended upon an experimental college in rural Vermont to read from The Maximus Poems and The Distances, and to lecture on Herman Melville. His captivating performance sparked lively debates with the audience on the nature of myth, history, etymology, narrative, knowledge, and sexuality. CHARLES OLSON AT GODDARD COLLEGE is an enthralling and indispensable annotated transcript that celebrates the intersection of Olson's poetics and a hopeful moment in American education.

A seminal figure in post-World War II literature, Charles Olson (1910-1970) has helped define the postmodern sensibility. His work 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 consciousness—all carried in a voice both intimate and grand, American and timeless, impassioned and cooly demanding. His books include The Collected Poems of Charles Olson (University of California Press, 1997), The Maximus Poems(University of California Press, 1983), and The Collected Prose (University of California Press, 1997).