Charles Olson (1910-1970) was a seminal and commanding force in contemporary poetry. He coined the term ‘post-modern’ and influenced a generation of major poets and writers, including Amiri Baraka, Paul Blackburn,  Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, and Robert Duncan. The range of his interests, from paleontology to physics to art history to psychology gave him an epic, lyric and freshly dramatic voice.

 

Ed Dorn called Olson “… a creative gambler, a great intellectual punter constantly at the gaming tables of thought and literature.”  William Carlos Williams said of Olson:  “A major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling  for other men that staggers me.”