Charles Olson's reading

by Ralph Maud

In this narrative account of the life and work of Charles Olson, Ralph Maud focuses on what the poet read as a basis for understanding the work he produced. To an extraordinary degree, Olson's reading and life were co-extensive, according to Maud, who notes that Olson saw his written output over his lifetime as a total cosmology. An individual who rarely traveled, this major American poet explored the world and its history as well as the furthest reaches of the thought of his day through books. Maud builds upon George Butterick's annotated listing of Olson's library, bought by the University of Connecticut after the poet's death in 1970. The present volume, however, adds categories of books Butterick deliberately omitted: Olson's childhood books and poetry by his own contemporaries. Linking Olson's books to his intellectual and poetic development at each stage of his career, Maud reveals such little-known but important connections as the contracted book project "Operation Red, White an