Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff: A Modern Correspondence

Front Cover
Wesleyan University Press, 1999 M08 20 - 552 pages
The highly influential yet undisclosed relationship between modern American poet Charles Olson (1910-1970) and Frances Boldereff comes to light in this first collection of their extensive, often impassioned, correspondence. What starts with a fan letter from the idiosyncratic intellectual Boldereff soon surges to an exchange numbering hundreds of pages. In these letters, one views the early stages of the “Maximus” poems and the developing poetics embodied in Olson’s 1950 essay on “Projective Verse.” While this correspondence reveals much about the work and life of a man who became the dominant figure among the Black Mountain poets, Boldereff herself stands out as an extraordinary collaborator, occasional lover, and intellectual rival to Olson. Here are two great minds and creative spirits caught up in an exchange every bit as riveting as the letters of de Beauvoir and Sartre.
 

Contents

Part I
1
Part III
55
Part IV
83
May 195019 July 1950
331
July 19507 September 1950
427
Selected Works by Charles Olson
545
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1999)

The "elder statesman" of the Black Mountain school of poets, Charles Olson directly affected the work of fellow teachers Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley, as well as students including John Wieners, Jonathan Williams, Joel Oppenheimer, and Edward Dorn. In his Selected Writings (1967), Olson emphasizes "how to restore man to his "dynamic.' There is too much concern, he feels, with end and not enough with instant. It is not things that are important, but what happens between them.... He thinks of poetry as transfers of energy and he reminds us that dance is kinesis, not mimesis" (N.Y. Times). Human Universe and Other Essays is a collection of interesting pieces on subjects ranging from Homer to Yeats. Proprioception is one of Olson's seminal essays on verse and the poet's awareness. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Olson attended Wesleyan, Harvard, and Yale Universities. He taught at Harvard University and Clark and Black Mountain colleges. He received two Guggenheim Fellowships and a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to study Mayan hieroglyphs in the Yucatan. His involvement with early Indian societies stimulated his interest in mysticism and the drug culture.

Bibliographic information