Charles Olson Quotes - Page 2

love is form, and cannot be without important substance

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

I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.

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

ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION

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.

bees dig the plum blossoms

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

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

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

Fact is based upon vulgar matter.

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

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

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

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

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

I was playing catch with the European audience.

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

The Canadian voice is still too rustic.

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

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.

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