Charles Olson Quotes

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

What does not change is the will to change

Knowledge is the harvest of attention

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

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

Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up.

We all want what's been suddenly disallowed.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Atlantis will rise again.

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

When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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