Source: Maximus Poems
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Famous Charles Olson Quotes
“The Canadian voice is still too rustic.”
Source: Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews
“Is it not the play of the mind we are after? Is it not that that shows a mind is there at all?”
“of rhythm is image / of image is knowing / of knowing there is / a construct”
Source: Collected Prose
“one loves only form, and form only comes into existence when the thing is born.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
“Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher will not indicate a favoring wind, or avert the thunderbolt.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems
Source: In Cold Hell, in Thicket: Poems
“love is form, and cannot be without important substance”
Source: Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff: A Modern Correspondence
“What does not change is the will to change”
Source: Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
Source: Selected Poems of Charles Olson
“by night only crazy things like the full moon and the whippoorwill and us, are busy.”
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
Source: Selected Poems of Charles Olson
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
Source: The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
“I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.”
“I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.”
“I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties.”
Source: Selected Poems of Charles Olson
“ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION”
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
“An American is a complex of occasions, themselves a geometry of spatial nature.”
Source: Selected Poems of Charles Olson
“O.K. I'm running out of appetite. Let this swirl- a bit like Crab Nebula- do for now.”
Source: Collected Prose
Source: Selected Writings of Charles Olson
“All that matters is that the thing be the thing of the thing.”
“I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.”
Source: Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews
“The heroes of the present will retreat to the imitation they are anyhow.”
Source: Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews
“The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.”
Source: Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews
“There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe.”
Source: Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews
“When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?”
Source: Muthologos: the collected lectures & interviews