Top 53 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Olson
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American poet Charles Olson.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe.
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.
You can do anything, literally, right? That's one of the exciting possibilities of the present.
We all want what's been suddenly disallowed.
You can read everybody. It's not even interesting to tell the truth because to some extent it's false.
I am happy to have some friends here in the kitchen.
We're all moving, moving, moving. Isn't it nice?
I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.
Fact is based upon vulgar matter.
I hope you're representing the devil's advocate.
The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.
Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up.
I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.
I'm one of the cliches that has grown up.
I remember way back when I was young, 10 years ago.
I'm trying to climb up both walls at once.
This country has been unconscious, and it's got to awake. That's my belief.
I'm sorry, but I was born with a towel on my head.
The heroes of the present will retreat to the imitation they are anyhow.
I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.
I was playing catch with the European audience.
You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble.
Atlantis will rise again.
When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?
Knowledge is the harvest of attention
Were all moving, moving, moving. Isnt it nice?
by night only crazy things
like the full moon and the whippoorwill
and us, are busy.
You can do anything, really. And that, l think, is one of the exciting possibilities of the present, l swear, is the possibility that the goddamn thing can be modaled throughout.
Not one death but many,
not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is
the law
ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION
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.
of rhythm is image / of image is knowing / of knowing there is / a construct
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.
All that matters is that the thing be the thing of the thing.
what pudor pejorocracy affronts
how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot
what breeds where dirtiness is law
what crawls
below
bees
dig the plum blossoms
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
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.
The body
whips the soul. In its great desire
it demands the elixir
In the roar of spring,
transmutations.
What does not change is the will to change
The flowers are ravined
by bees, the fruit blossoms
are thrown to the ground, the wind
the rain forces everything.
Is it not the play of the mind we are after? Is it not that that shows a mind is there at all?
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
one loves only form, and form only comes into existence when the thing is born.
what can we do
when even the public conveyances
sing?
how can we go anywhere,
even cross-town
how get out of anywhere
I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties.
The Canadian voice is still too rustic.
Whatever you have to say, leave The roots on, let them Dangle And the dirt Just to make clear Where they come from.
There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only/ eyes in all heads,/ to be looked out of.
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.
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