Charles Olson Quotes

O.K. I'm running out of appetite. Let this swirl- a bit like Crab Nebula- do for now.

The heroes of the present will retreat to the imitation they are anyhow.

We all want what's been suddenly disallowed.

The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.

I'm trying to climb up both walls at once.

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.

I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.

I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.

Were all moving, moving, moving. Isnt it nice?

What does not change is the will to change

You can read everybody. It's not even interesting to tell the truth because to some extent it's false.

Fact is based upon vulgar matter.

There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe.

Atlantis will rise again.

You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble

I was playing catch with the European audience.

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.

Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up.

Knowledge is the harvest of attention

All that matters is that the thing be the thing of the thing.

An American is a complex of occasions, themselves a geometry of spatial nature.

I'm one of the cliches that has grown up.

I hope you're representing the devil's advocate.

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.

I'm sorry, but I was born with a towel on my head.

Whatever you have to say, leave The roots on, let them Dangle And the dirt Just to make clear Where they come from.

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.

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.

ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION

When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?

There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only/ eyes in all heads,/ to be looked out of.