Charles Olson Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Of rhythm is image/ of image is knowing/ of knowing there is/ a construct — Charles Olson

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. — Charles Olson

If he stays inside himself, if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share. — Charles Olson

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

As it is there isn't a single thing isn't an opportunity for some 'alert' person, including practically everybody by the 'greed', that, they are 'alive', therefore. Etc. That, in fact, there are 'conditions'. Gravelly Hill or any sort of situation for improvement, when the Earth was properly regarded as a 'garden tenement messuage orchard and if this is nostalgia let you take a breath of April showers let's us reason how is the dampness in your nasal passage
but I have had lunch in this 'pasture' (B. Ellery to George Girdler Smith 'gentleman' 1799, for £ 150)
overlooking 'the town'
sitting there like the Memphite lord of
all Creation
...
It is not bad
to be pissed off — Charles Olson

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. — Charles Olson

This country has been unconscious, and it's got to awake. That's my belief. — Charles Olson

When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody? — Charles Olson

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

One loves only form, and form only comes into existence when the thing is born. — Charles Olson

the soul is / proprioceptive — Charles Olson

The flowers are ravined
by bees, the fruit blossoms

are thrown to the ground, the wind
the rain forces everything. — Charles Olson

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

Love is form, and cannot be without
important substance — Charles Olson

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

We all want what's been suddenly disallowed. — Charles Olson

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

This
is the abstract, this
is the cold doing, this
is the almost impossible — Charles Olson

Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up. — Charles Olson

I hope you're representing the devil's advocate. — Charles Olson

I remember way back when I was young, 10 years ago. — Charles Olson

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

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

By night only crazy things
like the full moon and the whippoorwill

and us, are busy. — Charles Olson

All that matters is that the thing be the thing of the thing. — Charles Olson

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 — Charles Olson

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. — Charles Olson

You can do anything, literally, right? That's one of the exciting possibilities of the present. — Charles Olson

The original in man is that which articulates him from the very outset upon something other than himself. — Charles Olson

What does not change is the will to change — Charles Olson

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

I am happy to have some friends here in the kitchen. — Charles Olson

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

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

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

ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION — Charles Olson

We're all moving, moving, moving. Isn't it nice? — Charles Olson

The Canadian voice is still too rustic. — Charles Olson

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

I was playing catch with the European audience. — Charles Olson

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

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

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

The body

whips the soul. In its great desire
it demands the elixir

In the roar of spring,
transmutations. — Charles Olson

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

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

A poem is a 'line' between any two points in creation. — Charles Olson

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

I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer. — Charles Olson

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

Atlantis will rise again. — Charles Olson

Knowledge is the harvest of attention — Charles Olson

Wholly absorbed into my own conduits to
an inner nature or subterranean lake
the depths or bounds of which I more and more
explore and know more
of, in that sense that other than that all else
closes out and I tend further to fall into
the Beloved Lake and I am blinder from
spending time as insistently in and on
this personal preserve from which
what I do do emerges more well-known than
other ways and other outside places which
don't give as much and distract me from
keeping my attentions as clear
Charles Olson, "Additions", March 1968 - 2 — Charles Olson

Fact is based upon vulgar matter. — Charles Olson

Bees
dig the plum blossoms — Charles Olson