Contents

Welcome to the internet anthology of Minutes of the Charles Olson Society, a scholarly journal published by Ralph Maud in Vancouver, Canada.

Ralph Maud (1928-2014)

Eulogy for Ralph Maud by Joseph Gallagher

The poet, the scholar, his journal, this anthology

“Olson now” — news and trackings


Memoirs

“Oh, Charlie me boy”

Memories of Charles Olson by his sister-in-law Jane Atherton

Olson, Wilcock and Bunker family photos

“Just live. . . The writing will take care of itself”

Peter Anastas traces a long association with Olson in Gloucester

This beloved companion

Robin Blaser on his beginnings with Olson

“Don’t ever want to be a poet!”

Albert Glover’s recollections of Olson at State University of New York in Buffalo (1964-65) and after

Unprepared for his immensity

William Corbett recalls encounters with Olson in 1965 and thereafter

. . . coffee-ringed first-editions, original Ms from Ezra Pound used as bookmarks. . .

Barry Miles’s notes from a 1969 visit to Olson’s home to tape readings from Maximus Poems IV, V, VI

“I will hate to leave this terrestrial paradise”

Ralph Maud’s notes of a visit with Olson in 1969

Transcriptions

“You live with your people as well as your ghosts”

Filming in Gloucester: a new transcript of Olson in conversation at home for a 1966 NET USA: Poetry TV show

“The man who made me a poet”

A photo of Louis Douglas and an excerpt from Herbert Kenny’s interview with Olson

“The curvature of the universe is love”

Jeremy Prynne’s lecture on Maximus Poems IV, V, VI at Simon Fraser University, 1971

Tom McGauley’s note on the transcription

“No one has loved a city — with some anger added — as Charles Olson loved this wonderful town”

A panel discussion at the Charles Olson Festival, Gloucester, August 1995

“You read it, you don’t quite understand it, you become engaged with it and it furthers your own engagement with being”

Poets Charles Stein and George Quasha assess Olson’s achievement at a 2001 meeting

Essays

“The nervousness because love is not born”

Ralph Maud traces the genesis of the first Maximus poem through a letter and three drafts

Into such a thicket did love of two women take him

Ralph Maud corrects misrepresentations of the Olson-Boldereff correspondence

Carving a man out of himself, filling his own space, and making traceries sufficient to others needs

Clayton Eshleman’s Notes on Charles Olson and the Archaic

The poem as a primary engagement with the real

Robert Duncan’s hand-out introducing Olson for a reading at the Poetry Center, San Francisco, in 1957

The image of the most exact freedom to be gained, now

Jeremy Prynne’s review of Maximus Poems IV, V, VI (1969)

That same flatness (& strung-out quality I want, & require”

Poet and typesetter Gerald Burns on the format of Maximus

with three letters from Olson to Barry Hall, Cape Goliard Press, 1968

Olson found himself able to step into the world he had foreseen

In “Tom Clark and the Collected Prose Ralph Maud addresses two misinterpretations

Guides

Chronology of Charles Olson’s life and work

by Peter Grant

My involvement in Charles Olson studies

Topics for Charles Olson studies

by Ralph Maud

Bibliography

Works by and about Charles Olson

An unspeakably valuable book

Gerald Burns’s review of Charles Olson’s Reading: a Biography

The most intelligent and informative introduction to the American poet’s life and work

A Charles Olson Reader

Man of Good Voyage

A review of Charles Olson at the Harbor, a Biography by Ralph Maud

Consequential and amazing

Maud’s Revised Second Edition of Muthologos: Charles Olson Lectures and Interviews

The Ralph Maud collection of Charles Olson’s books

An overview of this reconstructed library

My interest in seeing 28 Fort Square preserved for future generations

Ralph Maud’s report of a 1991 visit to Olson’s Gloucester home

Links

to the Charles Olson Collection and other resources on the Internet

Minutes of the Charles Olson Society

Summary of contents issue by issue; ordering back issues; contacting Ralph Maud.


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