Polis is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place
April 5, 20097pm, WGBH Boston
Channel 2
King Lear makes an appearance in this film. If you catch it--it's not hard to catch--and can explain the context I will reward you royally.
Watch and post a response...& I will reward you...
7 comments:
Alison Randazza
D Block
Apparently, when Charles Olson was dying, and on his way to a hospital via ambulance, he awoke and recited a part of this speech from King Lear:
"Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are..."
From Act 3, Scene 1.
I would give exact lines if I had my book with me.
By the way, the word verification for this is COLDos and it basically rudely reminded me of the horrible cold that I am suffering from.
Lucy Fox
motifs of CO's life
-water
-summer
-mornings
-death
also:
-CO uses free verse similar (in appearance) to e.e.cummings.
-the way he reads his poems is similar to jazz. the stops and intentional breaks remind me of jazz music, as well as those poetry slams or whatever in movies, haha, where they play bongos and a string bass or jazz flute. (specifically, Mike Myers in "So I Married an Axe Murderer"...'Woman....Woah! Man')
-i disagree with his statement saying that death defines life. (i'm not sure if it was from a poem or prose or something, but they said it in the movie at the part where they were looking at GHB from underneath/beside the footbridge) However, I think this statement speaks volumes about how Charles Olson viewed the world. (obviously.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETPRsJ-exZw
in case you've never seen it
Brian Hand
The speech that Olson quoted while in the ambulance is significant in that it juxtaposes the life of Olson with the story of Lear. In King Lear, Lear speaks those lines during the storm where he begins to understand the cruelty that humanity faces everyday. He asks God not to help him, but to help the "poor naked wretches," (3.4.32). This speech marks the increasing humanization of Lear despite or perhaps because of his apparent madness. I think Olson, (its strange comparing an actual human to a literary character) quoted this in response to what he saw Gloucester and the world becoming, a place ruled by commercialism and not community values. He cries out for the "poor naked wretches" to change how we live and insists that "what doesn't change/is the will to change."
For some reason lately i've been reading about process philosophy, specifically Alfred North Whitehead and how he influenced John Gardner's Grendel. It seems to me that Olson's beliefs were influenced by this type of philosophy as well. This belief defines truths and physical objects as products of repeated occasions of experience. Basically (i've disgustingly oversimplified this) I take it to mean that objects aren't static; they are more like a little story of everything that has happened to produce what we take as a concrete body. Change is not looked upon as a temporary illusion but as being essential to defining being. I think this can be applied to Olson's view that the change affecting Gloucester was becoming part of Gloucester's essential definition. I think this is echoed in Olson's poetry: "what doesn't change is the will to change."
I hope you don't interpret this as creepy.......Brian, you are incredible.
Brian,
First, I agree with Emily.
Second, I have long found it interesting how Gardner and Olson (two of the writers who have meant the most to me) use Whitehead in different ways. (Out of curiosity: what Whitehead have been reading?)
Third, you write "I think this can be applied to Olson's view that the change affecting Gloucester was becoming part of Gloucester's essential definition. I think this is echoed in Olson's poetry: 'what doesn't change / is the will to change.'"
What you note here is important. Too many people see the end of the documentary as implying that Olson didn't like change. As you rightly point out, Olson (like Whitehead and also like the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus) saw change (as opposed to stasis or fixed identity) as the essence of being. (I, too, am grossly oversimplifying.)
However, what kind of change? Throughout the Maximus Poems, Olson emphasizes "eyes," "attention," and "care." The changes we "will" -- i.e. our part in the change -- must be directed by understanding of the particulars of human experience. (You might like Olson's essay "The Human Universe".) Olson saw the dangers of large abstractions like "Progress" and "Human Good" because they can easily wash over particulars and they can be easily used to justify abominations.
I won't go on. (Yikes, I'm way behind...) But thanks for the commentary I wish I could spend more time with this.
Brian Hand
Mr Cook, I've read some of Modes of Thought and Process and Reality but, more enjoyably, I read Conversations With John Gardner, in which he talks about his philosophical and literary influences.
I read Olson's "Human Universe" and it seems to me to have been influenced by Whitehead's Modes of Thought. What I think both works stressed was a kind of inheritance of understanding, what Whitehead might call the "psychological unity of mankind." In HU, I think Olson was saying that we have lost touch with this understanding, as he puts it, men have "lost the capacity of their predecessors," I think Olson was stating that the repetition of common discourse often results in a lack of understanding, and he calls for a restoration of language. Olson makes an important distinction between "language as the act of the instant and language as the act of the thought about the instant." He writes that the generalities of understanding are so worked into our language that we cease thinking about or understanding them. I think Olson's poetry was an example of this restoration of language.
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