Charles Olson Quotations

bees dig the plum blossoms

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

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

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

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

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

Knowledge is the harvest of attention

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

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

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

Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up.

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.

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

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

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

ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION

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

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

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

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

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

I was playing catch with the European audience.

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.

Fact is based upon vulgar matter.

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

love is form, and cannot be without important substance

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

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

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

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

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

The Canadian voice is still too rustic.

When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?

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

We all want what's been suddenly disallowed.

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

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

I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.

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

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

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.

Atlantis will rise again.

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

What does not change is the will to change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I couldn't write a canto if I sat down and deliberately tried. My interest is not in cantos. It's in another condition of a song.