Charles Olson Quotes

Atlantis will rise again.

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

I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties.

Knowledge is the harvest of attention

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

What does not change is the will to change

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

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

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

of rhythm is image / of image is knowing / of knowing there is / a construct

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

When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?

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

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.

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

bees dig the plum blossoms

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

I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.

We all want what's been suddenly disallowed.

The body whips the soul. In its great desire it demands the elixir In the roar of spring, transmutations.

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.

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

The Canadian voice is still too rustic.

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.

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

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

Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher will not indicate a favoring wind, or avert the thunderbolt.

And all now is war where so lately there was peace, and the sweet brotherhood, the use of tilled fields.

Is it not the play of the mind we are after? Is it not that that shows a mind is there at all?

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

one loves only form, and form only comes into existence when the thing is born.

Fact is based upon vulgar matter.

love is form, and cannot be without important substance

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

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

Not one death but many, not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is the law

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

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

ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION

what can we do when even the public conveyances sing? how can we go anywhere, even cross-town how get out of anywhere

by night only crazy things like the full moon and the whippoorwill and us, are busy.

what pudor pejorocracy affronts how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot what breeds where dirtiness is law what crawls below

Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up.

The flowers are ravined by bees, the fruit blossoms are thrown to the ground, the wind the rain forces everything.

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

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

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

A poem is a ‘line’ between any two points in creation.