1.
Atlantis will rise again.
Charles Olson
2.
I hope you're representing the devil's advocate.
Charles Olson
3.
I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties.
Charles Olson
4.
Knowledge is the harvest of attention
Charles Olson
5.
Whatever you have to say, leave The roots on, let them Dangle And the dirt Just to make clear Where they come from.
Charles Olson
6.
What does not change is the will to change
Charles Olson
7.
I'm one of the cliches that has grown up.
Charles Olson
8.
There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe.
Charles Olson
9.
An American is a complex of occasions, themselves a geometry of spatial nature.
Charles Olson
10.
of rhythm is image / of image is knowing / of knowing there is / a construct
Charles Olson
11.
O.K. I'm running out of appetite. Let this swirl- a bit like Crab Nebula- do for now.
Charles Olson
12.
All that matters is that the thing be the thing of the thing.
Charles Olson
13.
This morning of the small snow I count the blessings, the leak in the faucet which makes of the sink time, the drop of the water on water.
Charles Olson
14.
When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?
Charles Olson
15.
I'm trying to climb up both walls at once.
Charles Olson
16.
A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have some several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader.
Charles Olson
17.
The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.
Charles Olson
18.
We all want what's been suddenly disallowed.
Charles Olson
19.
I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.
Charles Olson
20.
bees
dig the plum blossoms
Charles Olson
21.
I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.
Charles Olson
22.
The body
whips the soul. In its great desire
it demands the elixir
In the roar of spring,
transmutations.
Charles Olson
23.
I was playing catch with the European audience.
Charles Olson
24.
The Canadian voice is still too rustic.
Charles Olson
25.
You can do anything, really. And that, l think, is one of the exciting possibilities of the present, l swear, is the possibility that the goddamn thing can be modaled throughout.
Charles Olson
26.
I take space to be the central fact to man born in America. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large and without mercy.
Charles Olson
27.
There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only/ eyes in all heads,/ to be looked out of.
Charles Olson
28.
Were all moving, moving, moving. Isnt it nice?
Charles Olson
29.
The flowers are ravined
by bees, the fruit blossoms
are thrown to the ground, the wind
the rain forces everything.
Charles Olson
30.
Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up.
Charles Olson
31.
what pudor pejorocracy affronts
how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot
what breeds where dirtiness is law
what crawls
below
Charles Olson
32.
by night only crazy things
like the full moon and the whippoorwill
and us, are busy.
Charles Olson
33.
ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION
Charles Olson
34.
what can we do
when even the public conveyances
sing?
how can we go anywhere,
even cross-town
how get out of anywhere
Charles Olson
35.
You can read everybody. It's not even interesting to tell the truth because to some extent it's false.
Charles Olson
36.
I'm sorry, but I was born with a towel on my head.
Charles Olson
37.
Not one death but many,
not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is
the law
Charles Olson
38.
My life
has been given its orders: the seasons
seize
the soul and the body, and make mock
of any dispersed effort. The hour of death
is the only trespass
Charles Olson
39.
You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble
Charles Olson
40.
love is form, and cannot be without
important substance
Charles Olson
41.
Fact is based upon vulgar matter.
Charles Olson
42.
I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.
Charles Olson
43.
Is it not the play of the mind we are after? Is it not that that shows a mind is there at all?
Charles Olson
44.
Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher
will not indicate a favoring wind,
or avert the thunderbolt.
Charles Olson
45.
And all now is war
where so lately there was peace,
and the sweet brotherhood, the use
of tilled fields.
Charles Olson
46.
one loves only form, and form only comes into existence when the thing is born.
Charles Olson
47.
The heroes of the present will retreat to the imitation they are anyhow.
Charles Olson