The Collected Poems of Charles Olson: Excluding the Maximus Poems [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9780520920415

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THE COLLECTED P O E M S OF CHARLES OLSON

THE COLLECTED P O E M S OF CHARLES OLSON Excluding the Maximus poems

Edited by George F. Butterick

University

of California Press

/

Berkeley

Los Angeles

London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Printed in the United States of America 123456789

Poems in this edition published during Charles Olson's lifetime are copyright © 1987 by the Estate of Charles Olson; previously unpublished poems among Charles Olson's papers at the University of Connecticut Library are copyright © 1987 by the University of Connecticut. The editorial apparatus is copyright © 1987 by the Regents of the University of California.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olson, Charles, 1 9 1 0 - 1 9 7 0 . The collected poems of Charles Olson. I. Butterick, George F. II. Title. PS3529.L655A17

1987

811'.54

ISBN 0 - 5 2 0 - 0 5 7 6 4 - 3 ( a l k . p a p e r )

86-14652

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

xix

Purgatory Blind

3

You, Hart Crane

4

Birth's Obituary

4

Atalanta

5

White Horse Fire Is

6

6

Fable for Slumber

7

Hymn to the Word Tomorrow

9

The House

10

8

B y Cure of—Sulfa Law

11

11

A Lion upon the Floor Sing, Mister, Sing The K

13

14

Pacific Lament She

12

15

16

She, Thus

17

The Night

18

A Translation

19

Her Dream, Half Remembered Ballad for Americans Key West

21

23

New England March

24

Lower Field—Enniscorthy Said Adam

25

Burial Ground Enniscorthy Suite

V

27 28

24

20

The Town

31

Afternoon

34

2 Propositions and 3 Proof A Lustrum for You, E.P. The Winter After

35 37

40

Marry the Marrow

41

There Was a Youth Whose Name Was Thomas Grangi Trinacria

45

La Préface

46

The Dragon-Fly

47

Epigraph to Call Me Ishmael Lalage!

48

48

The Return Bagatto

49 50

"Double, double, root and branch . . . " The Fool

52

A Constance, This Day The Moebius Strip X to the Nth

54

54

56

The Green Man

57

Canto One Hundred and One Your Eyes

51

58

59

2

R 59 In the Hills South of Capernaum, Port A Spring Song for Cagli

62

Willie Francis and the Electric Chair Move Over

63

66

A Fish Is the Flower of Water Landscape, Without Color

67 68

Only the Red Fox, Only the Crow All You Can Do

70

"Put him this way . . . "

VI

60

70

69

Conqueror

72

Conqueror

73

February 10, One Year Too Late "Elements of clothes . . . " Igor Stravinsky Troilus Siena

75

78 79

80

Tanto e Amara

80

Name-Day Night La Chute

81

82

La Chute II

83

La Chute III Dura

74

76

Sans Name Li Po

74

85

85

The Kingfishers Epigon

86

93

The Laughing Ones The Praises The Babe

95

96 101

"all things stand out against the sky . . . "hear my prayer my father . . . " "under every green tree . . . " The Advantage These Days

105 106

A Po-sy, A Po-sy

107

"here i am, naked . . . " "It's SPRingAgAIN!" Asymptotes

113 115

117

The Morning News A Gloss

118

125

O f Lady, of Beauty, of Stream

Vll

104 104

126

AtYorktown

127

The She-Bear

129

The She-Bear (II)

134

To the She-Bear: The 1st Song Diaries of Death

140

143

"friday, Good Friday . . . " Cinos

144

145

Bigmans

147

Bigmans II

149

In Cold Hell, in Thicket For Sappho, Back

155

160

"Help Me, Venus, You Who Led Me On" Other Than

165

Quatrain

166

Day Song

166

Day Song, the Day After The Dry Ode ABCs

169

170

171

A B C s (2)

173

A B C s (3—for Rimbaud)

174

The Story of an Olson, and Bad Thing Adamo Me . . . La Torre

182

189

The Cause, the Cause O f Mathilde

194

The Gate Is Prouti There Are Sounds . . . Issue, Mood Signs

190 195 196

197

200

The Moon Is the Number 18 Abstract # 1 , Yucatan This

Vlii

203

203

201

He, Who, in His Abandoned Infancy, Spoke ofjesus, Caesar, Those Who Beg, and Hell 206 Knowing All Ways, Including the Transposition of Continents Concerning Exaggeration, or How, Properly, to Heap U p

207

208

To Gerhardt, There, Among Europe's Things of Which He Has Written Us in His "Brief an Creeley und Olson" The Fathers Applause

212

222 225

Issues from the Hand of God A Round & A Canon

231

Letter for Melville 1951 "pitcher, how . . ." The Ring of

229

233

241

243

For C y Twombly Faced with His First Chicago & N. Y. Shows An Ode on Nativity

245

"At midnight, after hours of love . . . " The Clouds

For a Lady of Whom I Speak To the Algae

250

251

The Civil War

251

The Connection The Friend

253

256

War on the Mind in a Time of Love A Discrete Gloss Kin

249

250

258

259

262

The Thing Was Moving

263

"He / in the dark stall . . . "

265

Black Mt. College Has a Few Words for a Visitor Merce of Egypt

269

A Toss, for John Cage The Leader

271

273

"The winds / which blew my daughter . . . " From the Inca

IX

275

275

268

244

Dramatis Personae

276

T h e Collected Poems O f C o m m o n Place

278

282

"It's got to this . . . "

284

" m y poor dumb body . . . "

284

" m y poor dumb body . . . "

285

Well

286

T h e Mast

286

For a Man Gone to Stuttgart W h o Left an Automobile Behind H i m " T h e sea / is an archeology . . . " Proensa

291

Jas Jargon

293

Maya Against Itzas T h e Boat

295

T h e Soul

297

Da B o y g

298

Love

291

295

299

T h e Motion

300

T h e Pavement A Story

303

Peograms T h e Real

301

304 305

I Believe in You . . . Red Mallows

306

307

The Death o f Europe

308

Going from Battle to Battle

316

Small Birds, to Agree with the Leaves, C o m e in the Fall I, Mencius, Pupil of the Master . . . O'Ryan

321

O'Ryan 1 1 - 1 5

330

True Numbers

333

N e w Poem

X

333

318

317

290

Anecdotes of the Late War The Bride

334

340

The Picture

342

" H e treads on edges of being . . . " Sut Lovingood

342

343

King's Mountain

343

The Post Virginal

354

" A s I went in and out I heard pieces . . . " De Los Cantares Evil

355

357

359

The Seven Songs

362

A Newly Discovered 'Homeric' Hymn The Whole World Quail

363

365

368

" C r y pain, & the dogs of yrself devour . . . " The Alba Love I

369 370

"The chain of memory is resurrection . . . " "Anubis will stare . . . " As the Dead Prey Upon Us

384 388

Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele The Perfume!

400

"The perfume / of flowers! . . . "

402

" T h e perfume / of flowers! . . . "

403

The Encounter

404

Thoughts of the Time

407

"Who slays the Spanish sun . . . " The Business Hate

409

Who

410

Long Distance

409

410

372

380

The Lordly and Isolate Satyrs

XI

368

407

396

" Y o u know, verse / is a lovely thing . . . " T h e Loves of Anat, 1 T h e Librarian

412

T h e Writ

415

T h e Writ

417

"I weep, fountain ofJazer" She Who Hits at Will Anniversary

419 420

421

T h e C o m p a n y of M e n

423

O n e Word as the Complete Poem Obit

411

411

425

425

" B e a u t y / is to lay hold of Love . . . "

430

Moonset, Gloucester, December 1, 1957, 1:58 AM What's Wrong with Pindar

431

"Without the Season of Structure . . . " Just Inside the Vigil of Christmas T h e Treatment

430

432

432

433

"It isn't m y w o r d but m y mother's . . . " Poemless R h y m e s for the T i m e s "With what I got out . . . " All Havens Astern

435

436

" I just passed / a s w o o n y time . . . " O f the United States

433

434

436

437

"tenementy twilightish landscape . . . " " I was stretched out on the earth . . . "

438 439

T h e Year Is a Great Circle or the Year Is a Great Mistake Measure

440

T h e Mind's Notice Rosy, It Was

440

441

A Six Inch Chapter—in Verse Easter

T h e Gonfalon Raised Tonight

Xll

442

443 447

439

" R u f u s Woodpecker . . . "

451

Stone and Flower Series Memorial D a y I Mean, N o

462 463

" I hang on by . . . " Afica

455

464

465

To Try to Get D o w n One Citizen as Against Another "the Flower grows / f r o m the roots . . . " " T h e liturgical / eighth day . . . " "Sit by the w i n d o w and refuse . . . " Christmas

470

T h e Song

471

466

467

"Undazzled, keen, / love sits . . . " Winter Solstice

466

467 468

469

Being Altogether Literal, & Specific, and Seeking at the Same T i m e to B e Successfully E x - plicit 472 Conversation galante

479

"the d o g w o o d comes out yellow . . . " "right in m y eye . . . "

483

" T h i s man's weakness is straw . . . " " M y love is also / like . . . " Incunabula, 1958

482 483

484

484

" g o / make a bridge . . . " "It's not / the erotic . . . "

485 486

E v e r y M a n His O w n Matador; or for That Matter A n y M e m b e r of the Family M a y 20, 1959

487 487

T h e Nerves Are Staves, and When the Tears C o m e There Is Voice T h e Intended A n g l e of Vision Is f r o m M y Kitchen "the proper soul / in the proper body . . . " T h e Distances

491

" I am so small you can hardly see me . . . "

xill

490 493

489

488

" A l l pink from the bath she slept . . . " Assuming the Soul Is a Bitch

494

494

"one night Ma / lay with Pa . . . "

496

Carrying Water to the Youth in Honor of Sappho / Jane Harrison / & Miss Duncan If / She Had 496 The Dance, of the Grizzly Bear On All Sides

497

498

" O n the equator east of my son . . . "

498

"The Muse / is the 'fate' of the poem . . . " The Objects

499

"abt the dead he sd . . . "

500

"not a rat-hole, a cat-hole . . . " Across Space and Time

501

508

Compleynt Blossoms April to July The Disposition A Promise The Will To I'm With You

498

509

510

511 512 512

Cross-Legged, the Spider and the Web

513

The Inadequate Orderly Simplification . . . Thy Gleeman Who Flattered Thee

514

King of the Wood / King of the Dead

515

514

"Borne down by the inability to lift the heaviness . . . " The Lie of 10, or The Concept of Zero

"Mazdaism / has overcome / the world . . . " "In one age or other . . ."

515

516 $18

519

A 2nd Musical Form, for Dave Young

519

A Woman's Nipples Is the Rose of the World The Mathematical Secret, and the Apron " A s though there were no flowing . . . "

521 522 523

Dylan Thomas, and N o w Matthew Mead—As He Himself, 'To Edward Thomas' The Yellow of the Mask

xiv

525 $27

The Hustings

528

The Hustings

532

"Pente cost . . . "

536

When One Age Goes with It Suddenly Its Errors Evaporate "Sin is inferiority . . ." May 31, 1961

538

539

The Allegory of Wealth

540

There Is No River Which Is Called Lethe The Red Fish-of-Bones The Binnacle

540

$42

545

To Empty the Mind What Had to Go

546 548

How Things Change The Americans

551

The Americans

552

The Snow

537

550

552

" 1 7 t h century men / who founded this land . . . " Examples—for Richard Bridgeman On the Shore

553

555

556

Hymn to Proserpine

556

Shang Dynasty Oracle Bone 2 Say

558

"some partial cloudiness will flow locally . . . "

558

To a Poet Who Read in Gloucester Before the Cape Ann Historical Literary and Scientific Society 559 In an Automotive Store

560

"It is a nation of nothing but poetry . . . " "in Wiro language . . . "

563

"Shut in

567

kept o f f . . . "

"there they were . . . "

569

" I saw, from under Him . . . " Ferrini—I

562

570

571

" A s the shield goddess, Mycenae . . . "

582

"Snow White was always waiting . . . "

584

xv

" I had had / a beetle . . . "

585

" I met m y Angel last night . . . " " L o v e is the talk . . . "

586

588

" H i s house / in the branches . . . "

588

A Part of the Series on the Paths

589

" T h e personality and dourness of winter . . . " For M a c H a m m o n d

590

590

" — t h e End of the World / is the Turn-About . . . " "Color . . . " 'West'

592

593

as of Bozeman T w o Poems

594 595

West 4 and