At Last!!! ... (Notes on Corbin & Poetry #??...)

A Curriculum Of The Soul Volumes One & Two edited by John Clarke and Albert Glover Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016. on amazon Reviewed by WIlliam Farrar on amazon: After over 50 years, the Curriculum of the Soul has come out in an affordable trade copy. This work is an homage to the poet Charles Olson. Olson, in the is known mainly for being a “Black Mountain” poet, an American in the style of Ezra Pound, and for conveying the idea of projective verse, which discussed the centrality of breath as an organization structure of poetry. In the past decades, Olson’s reputation as a poet has taken some hits. A biography by Tom Clark (Allegory of a Poet) and the editing of Olson’s masterwork, the unfinished The Maximus Poems by George Butterick created the image of a person who’s poetic muse was like Melville’s Ahab in Moby Dick, a dark, obsessed character whose life ended in the wreckage of an incomplete, unfulfillable vision. The Curriculum of the Soul, which was edited by Albert Glover and Jack Clarke points toward a different Olson. Glover and Clarke chose 28 words taken from a typescript by Olson called Curriculum of the Soul and assigned each one to a different poet or writer associated with Olson in some way, who produced a fascicle on one of the words. Contributors include poets such as Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser, and Joanne Kyger. These fascicles have been combined together and the individual contributors' name have been backgrounded. The Curriculum exemplifies the ideals of a different Olson than can be found in Tom Clark’s biography. The Olson evoked by the contributor to these volumes is the Olson who dreamed of a “nation of nothing but poetry”, who mythologized his own vision Greek ideal of polis, where individuals came together to create something that was whole but transcended the individuality of a single creator’s ego. The Curriculum achieves this by creating a work that has the feel of a single epic meditation and yet transcends the perspective of a single ego. In a sense, the work functions like the poetic equivalent of the free jazz of the 60s. Like free jazz- or any collective project- the work is uneven. There are notable moments in the work: moments of beauty and insight that capture the vibrant spirit that Olson’s writing and ideas point towards. But, there are also weaker, less committed contributions that provide very little to the whole. In addition, the work reveals some of the limits of the main era of its composition: it has a viewpoint that is predominantly male, white, and 70s in its consciousness (think of those old photographs with bell bottoms). In spite of these limitations, the work is valuable. It serves as a document of the evolution of poetry in 20th century America, a memorial to an influential post-WWII American poet, and an homage of perseverance, commitment and care on the part of its editors. Volume One Charles Olson Albert Glover Duncan McNaughton John Wieners Michael Boughn Lisa Jarnot Fred Wah John Clarke Robert Duncan Alice Notley Robin Blaser Robert Dalke George F. Butterick Edward Kissam Edgar Billowitz Volume One i THE MUSHROOM ii DREAM iii WOMAN iv MIND v LANGUAGE vi EARTH vii BLAKE viii DANTE ix HOMER’S ART x BACH’S BELIEF xi NOVALIS’ SUBJECTS xii THE NORSE xiii THE ARABS xiv AMERICAN INDIANS Volume Two Harvey Brown Lewis MacAdams, Jr Ed Sanders Michael Bylebyl David Tirrell Danny Zimmerman Drummond Hadley James Koller Gerrit Lansing Joanne Kyger Robert Grenier John Thorpe Anselm Hollo Michael McClure Volume Two xv JAZZ PLAYING xvi DANCE xvii EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS xviii ISMAELI MUSLIMISM xix ALCHEMY xx PERSPECTIVE xxi VISION xxii MESSAGES xxiii ANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY xxiv PHENOMENOLOGICAL xxv MATTER xxvi ATTENTIION xxvii SENSATION xxviii ORGANISM - Artículo*: Tom Cheetham - Más info en psico@mijasnatural.com / 607725547 MENADEL Psicología Clínica y Transpersonal Tradicional (Pneumatología) en Mijas y Fuengirola, MIJAS NATURAL *No suscribimos necesariamente las opiniones o artículos aquí enlazados
 

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Más info en psico@mijasnatural.com / 607725547 MENADEL Psicología Clínica y Transpersonal Tradicional (Pneumatología) en Mijas y Fuengirola, MIJAS NATURAL.

(No suscribimos necesariamente las opiniones o artículos aquí presentados)