Charles Olson

What does not change / is the will to change

Charles Olson (December 27, 1910 – January 10, 1970) was an influential American poet, credited as one of the thinkers who coined the term postmodern.

Quotes

The Kingfishers (1950)

The legends are
legends.

Not one death but many,
not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is
the law

Around an appearance, one common model, we grow up
many.

The message is
a discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events distributed in time

As published in The Collected Poems of Charles Olson (1987), edited by George F. Butterick · Full text online, at the Poetry Foundation

• What does not change / is the will to change
  • Part I, 1

• When I saw him, he was at the door, but it did not matter,
  he was already sliding along the wall of the night, losing himself
  in some crack of the ruins. That it should have been he who said, “The kingfishers!
  who cares
  for their feathers
  now?”

  His last words had been, “The pool is slime.”

  • Part I, 2

• The legends are
  legends. Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher
  will not indicate a favoring wind,
  or avert the thunderbolt. Nor, by its nesting,
  still the waters, with the new year, for seven days.
  It is true, it does nest with the opening year, but not on the waters.
  • Part I, 2

• And all now is war
  Where so lately there was peace,
  and the sweet brotherhood, the use
  of tilled fields.
  • Part I, 3

• When the attentions change / the jungle
  leaps in     even the stones are split
          they rive
  • Part I, 3

• Not one death but many,
  not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is
  the law

Into the same river no man steps twice
When fire dies air dies
No one remains, nor is, one

Around an appearance, one common model, we grow up
many. Else how is it,
if we remain the same,
we take pleasure now
in what we did not take pleasure before? love
contrary objects? admire and / or find fault? use
other words, feel other passions, have
nor figure, appearance, disposition, tissue
the same?

To be in different states without a change
is not a possibility

• Part I, 4

• We can be precise. The factors are
  in the animal and / or the machine the factors are
  communication and / or control, both involve
  the message. And what is the message? The message is
  a discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events distributed in time

  is the birth of the air, is
  the birth of water, is
  a state between
  the origin and
  the end, between
  birth and the beginning of
  another fetid nest

  is change, presents
  no more than itself

  And the too strong grasping of it,
  when it is pressed together and condensed,
  loses it

  This very thing you are

  • Part I, 4

• with what violence benevolence is bought
  what cost in gesture justice brings
  what wrongs domestic rights involve
  what stalks
  this silence
  • Part II

Quotes about Charles Olson

• He (Bob Creeley) introduced me to Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg-and Ginsberg has been a major model of mine. Olson has been a major model.
  • Paula Gunn Allen Interview in Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets by Joseph Bruchac (1987)

• In the early 1960s Denise Levertov introduced me to the work of Creeley, Duncan, and Olson. Also, of course, Williams, though I'd read him a bit before. But my own life, also, was pushing me into kinds of poetry I hadn't written before. Over the years, I was to draw in my own way on their (very different) poetics, but more on the poetry itself. The title and epigraph of The Will to Change are from Olson's "The Kingfishers."
  • Adrienne Rich Arts of the Possible (2001)

External links

• Olson Biography, University of Connecticut Libraries
• Olson profile at Academy of American Poets
• Profile at Poetry Foundation