Charles Olson
I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does.Collection: Poetry
You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble.Collection: Poetry
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.Collection: Morning
Atlantis will rise again.
I am happy to have some friends here in the kitchen.
I'm sorry, but I was born with a towel on my head.
Forgive me if I sleep until I wake up.
We're all moving, moving, moving. Isn't it nice?
You can read everybody. It's not even interesting to tell the truth because to some extent it's false.
You can do anything, literally, right? That's one of the exciting possibilities of the present.
When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody?
We all want what's been suddenly disallowed.
This country has been unconscious, and it's got to awake. That's my belief.
There is a grace of life which is still yours, my dear Europe.
The poem, for me, is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being.
The heroes of the present will retreat to the imitation they are anyhow.
I'm trying to climb up both walls at once.
I'm one of the cliches that has grown up.
I was playing catch with the European audience.
I sound like Homer. I mean Winslow Homer.
I remember way back when I was young, 10 years ago.
I hope you're representing the devil's advocate.
I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.
Fact is based upon vulgar matter.
Whatever you have to say, leave The roots on, let them Dangle And the dirt Just to make clear Where they come from.Collection: Roots
What does not change is the will to changeCollection: Change
Knowledge is the harvest of attentionCollection: Attention
All that matters is that the thing be the thing of the thing.Collection: Matter
of rhythm is image / of image is knowing / of knowing there is / a constructCollection: Knowing
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.Collection: Way
An American is a complex of occasions, themselves a geometry of spatial nature.Collection: Spatial
Were all moving, moving, moving. Isnt it nice?Collection: Nice
There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only/ eyes in all heads,/ to be looked out of.Collection: Eye
ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTIONCollection: 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.Collection: Umpires
You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my troubleCollection: People
Is it not the play of the mind we are after? Is it not that that shows a mind is there at all?Collection: Play
O.K. I'm running out of appetite. Let this swirl- a bit like Crab Nebula- do for now.Collection: Running