| Name: |
Charles Olson |
| Birth Date: |
|
| Death Date: |
|
| Place of Birth: |
|
| Place of Death: |
|
| Nationality: |
|
| Gender: |
|
| Occupations: |
|
Charles Olson shaped postmodern American writing through his poetry and his essays. As the successor to Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the inheritor of Herman Melville's prophetic voice, he was the leading voice of the Black Mountain Poets--which included Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Edward Dorn, and Joel Oppenheimer. He has claimed a dominant place in literary history with his epic series, The Maximus Poems (1953-1975); the theoretical manifesto "Projective Verse" (1950); essays such as "Human Universe" (1951); the lecture/essays published after his death as The Special View of History (1970); his study of Melville, myth, and America, Call Me Ishmael (1947); and his acknowledged influence on an entire generation of poets. He caused the reconsideration of poetic structures and reengaged contemporary poetry with its American traditions after the flirtation with European sources in the high modernist movement of the first part of the century. Warren Tallman in his preface to The Poetics of the New American Poetry (1973) speaks of "Olson's generation" the way Hugh Kenner has referred to "the Pound Era."
Olson's background reflects diverse interests and experience and somewhat explains why he did not publish his first poem until his mid thirties.
This is a free page. This page contains 151 words. This
biography contains 8,773 words (approx. 29 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Charles (John) Olson Access Pass.
