Links
The Charles Olson Research Collection
Charles Olson’s papers are housed in the Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs. The long-neglected website at http://charlesolson.uconn.edu/ has these features:
A biographic sketch
by George Butterick
with links to a chronology
of Olson’s life (from Butterick’s A Guide to the
Maximus Poems) and a partial bibliography
A searchable correspondence database
whose shortcomings include
no dates for offshore correspondence
Brief biographies of Olson’s “correspondents of note”
A searchable 500+ photo database
A terse listing of the more than 1700 books and folders from Olson’s library housed at Storrs
Olson’s Melville Project
“While researching the life and works of Herman Melville,
Olson transcribed the marginalia of hundreds of books from Melville’s personal library. . . includes a detailed description of the project
as well as searchable digital images of the marginalia.”
“A Taste of Olson,” poems and prose
Includes “A
Lustrum for You, E.P.,” “La Preface,” “Bagatto,” “The
Moebius Strip,” “ABCs,” “In Cold Hell, In Thicket”
and “This” (all in The Collected Poems); lead paragraphs of “Projective
Verse” and “Human Universe;” a fragment of Call Me Ishmael; a brief
essay on prosody, “A Foot is to Kick With;” and a book review, “It Was. But it Ain’t.” (all
in Collected Prose). “To Bet,” a dedicatory poem found with the Maximus
Poems IV, V, VI MSS at Storrs as a galley proof, is not in the
published work.
With a finding aid at http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaids/Olson_C/MSS19690001.html
Elsewhere on the internet
PennSound at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing has a extensive audio postings of Olson poems and lectures: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Olson.php, including:
Reading at Black Mountain College, c. 1954
Reading at San Francisco State University, 1957
Reading in Boston, June 1962
Reading and lecture at Goddard College, Vermont, April 12-14, 1962
With a link to transcriptions by Kyle Schlesinger (cf. Ralph Maud’s
transcriptions in Muthologos, 2nd edition).
Reading at the Vancouver Poetry Festival [sic], August 16, 1963
Talk at Gratwick’s [sic] Highlands, November 16, 1963
Transcribed
by George M. Butterick and published in Muthologos with the title “Under the Mushroom.”
Lecture, “Causal Mythology” at the Berkeley Poetry Conference, July 20, 1965
Transcribed
by George Butterick and published in Muthologos.
Reading at the Berkeley Poetry Conference, July 23, 1965
with a link to excerpts from
Zoe Brown’s 1966 transcription (cf. Ralph Maud’s transcription in Muthologos).
Lectures on “Poetry and Truth” and a reading Beloit College, Wisconsin, March 25-29, 1968.
Transcribed
by George Butterick and published in Muthologos.
and a number of unsourced readings.
The Slought Foundation website (slought.org) has posted extensive recordings from the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference, recorded by Fred Wah, including:
The discussion of July 29 among Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen and Olson
transcribed by Ralph Maud
and published in Muthologos
with the title “On History.”
The discussion of August 14 between Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg and Olson
transcribed by Ralph Maud
and published in the 2nd edition of Muthologos with the title “Duende, Muse, and Angel.”
Reading by Charles Olson on August 14.
OlsonNow, a poetry and poetics blog established September 2005 by Michael Kelleher and Ammiel Alcalay (dormant since 2010):
Robert Creeley’s appreciation of Olson, written in 2000 as a preface to the second (paperback) edition of Tom Clark’s Charles Olson: Allegory of a Poet’s Life:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/olson/creeleyonolson.htm
Robin Blaser’s 1983 essay “The Violets: ‘A Cosmological Reading of a Cosmology’” on Olson’s understanding of Alfred North Whitehead:
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2534
Review of Olson’s Selected Poems by Peter Quartermain:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/quartermain/quartermain.olson
Two responses to the Charles Olson Festival, August 12, 1995, Gloucester, Mass., on the Electronic Poetry Center website of the SUNY Buffalo:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/glazier/o-rpt.html
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/funkhouser/olson.funk
The 1975 album Charles Olson Reads from Maximus Poems IV, V, VI is available on CD, cassette or by download from Smithsonian Folkways:
http://www.folkways.si.edu/charles-olson-reads-from-maximus-poems-iv-v-vi/poetry/album/smithsonian