Imagining Persons

Robert Duncan's Lectures on Charles Olson

Edited by Robert J. BertholfDale M. Smith

$75.00	Hardcover	978-0-8263-5891-2	December 2017
$75.00	E-book	978-0-8263-5892-9	December 2017

$75.00
Hardcover
978-0-8263-5891-2
December 2017

$75.00
E-book
978-0-8263-5892-9
December 2017

Details

Overview

Robert Duncan’s nine lectures on Charles Olson, delivered intermittently from 1961 to 1983, explore the modernist literary background and influences of Olson’s influential 1950 essay “Projective Verse.” These transcribed talks pay tribute to Olson and expand our knowledge of Duncan’s vision of modernist writing.

Subjects: Literary CriticismPoetics

Contributor Bios

Robert J. Bertholf (1940–2016) served as the curator of the Poetry Collection at the University of Buffalo for twenty-five years. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including several about Robert Duncan and his work.

Dale M. Smith is an associate professor in Ryerson University’s Department of English. He is the author of Poets Beyond the Barricade: Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Dissent after 1960 and Slow Poetry in America.

Acclaim

“In these lectures, Duncan explores the meaning and context of Olson’s poetry and dynamic presence as poet and innovator, while also providing a broader representation of poetry and thought, ancient and modern, delivered with wit, intelligence, curiosity, and care. Essential reading for anyone interested in . . . the work of two of the most important poets of the postwar period.”—Peter O’Leary, author of Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness

Contents

Preface
Dale M. Smith
Acknowledgments
Note on the Text

Introduction: Advocating Projective Verse Aesthetics
Dale M. Smith
Vancouver Lecture
Ideas of Primordial Time in Charles Olson’s Work
Timing and the Creation of Time in Charles Olson’s Maximus
The Power of Imagining Persons: The Poem as an Interior Play
The Fatefulness of Ongoing Identifications: The Poem as the Recall and Adventure of Self in Projection
“Forth on the godly sea”: The Daemonic in the Realm of Poetry
The World Felt as Presence
Projective Project: Charles Olson
On Projective Verse

Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Extras

Imagining Persons

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Also of Interest

Spring 2019 Catalog

Resources For

Help

About Us

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Also of Interest

The Collected Letters of Charles Olson and J. H. Prynne

The Olson Codex

An Open Map

Robert Duncan and the Pragmatist Sublime

Spring 2019 Catalog