Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 11 Article 3 Issue 4 Fall 1980 Charles Olson and the Postmodern Advance George F. Butterick Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Butterick, George F.. "Charles Olson and the Postmodern Advance." The Iowa Review 11.4 (1980): 3-27. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.2641 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ^-&f^ 5 -T5 3 University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org Charles Olson and the Postmodern Advance George F. Butterick CHARLES OLSON was always very pleased by the fact that the time he was ever a was only given psychological test?when he invited to with participate along twenty-three other poets, including William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, and the like, as part of an examination of conducted a creativity by Harvard graduate student?the results of the test confirmed that he a had "high tolerance of disorder." The was in experiment administered 1950 by Robert N. Wilson, working under Olson's friend and fellow Melville scholar, Henry A. Murray, father and of the widely known Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), consisted of an interview and modified form of the TAT, in which visual are Not it patterns explored and narrated. insignificantly, is also known as a test it known "projective" although Olson experienced after his well was in so was no "Projective Verse" essay already press, there probably connection.1 But would this quality?a "high tolerance of disorder"?I offer, may be one of the chief characteristics of the poetry written since we as the Second World War which know "post-modern." a no use or Postmodernism is critic's term; it has popular necessity. It has its as most terms its an limits, descriptive of order do?to such extent that I came an recently upon interviewer asking Amiri Baraka a about "post-postmodern" art!2 It is, like the designation Black Moun tain a term of convenience no absolute on Poets, that has bearing reality. even matter? It is like the Middle Ages?or middle age, for that to to unlikely be defined with satisfaction all. I introduce it into the to present discussion only because it may be useful in order distinguish Charles his most Olson from immediate predecessors, and, importantly, because Olson himself used it, and used it about himself. Most or the is generally, "postmodern" (with without hyphen) used to new distinguish the energies appearing in American culture follow an outrun ing World War II, from exhausted modernism which had its course. term in The itself has gained increasing critical acceptance recent seems to a in years, until by this date it be fixity literary history. A itself in its to be a prominent literary periodical declares subtitle "journal of postmodern literature," and there have been any number of on critic Hassan essays and symposia the subject. The writings of Ihab and David Antin's essay "Modernism and Postmodernism: Approaching 4 2 come most to the Present in American Poetry" in Boundary readily a in recent American mind.3 Even California bookseller specializing wares in & Post writing offers his catalogues designated "Modern term modern Literature." The has been surveyed with all desired thor two recent oughness in articles in the journal Amerikastudien, published so in Stuttgart for the German Association for American Studies, there is no need to do that here, even if there were time.4 term was The first used, apparently, by the historian Toynbee, al is not though Olson?and this generally known?may have actually to use current to use been the first it in its application, and the first it not I time to repeatedly if consistently.5 will take the document this in so we can a it because doing have better understanding of what might mean to a be "post-modern" poet. As uses serves not to Olson it, the designation merely advance beyond an an to outmoded modernism, but it seeks alternative the entire disposi tion of mind that has dominated man's intellectual and political life since 500 B.C. As as Me in roughly early Call Ishmael, published 1947, man. Olson felt that logic and classification betrayed "Logic and clas sification had led civilization toward man, away from space" (p. 14). Now to restore man to a Olson sought from his egocentric humanism in same proper relationship with the universe, the way he says Melville man: went to to and had, and, before that, early "Melville space probe man. man same: care of find Early did the poetry, language and the statement myth" (p. 14). His classic is in "Human Universe," his finest one piece of theoretical prose, the he called the "base" of his cultural position and "the body, the substance, of my faith" (Letters for Origin, p. 69). There he explains how logic and classification intervene between man our our and the universe, "intermite participation in experience." out to restore And the only way is mythological participation in the laws nature a is act of through language which "the of the instant" rather act than "the of thought about the instant" (Human Universe, p. 4). The result is an intensified syntax which fuses man with natural processes. In an to a effort break free, post-modern poetry requires almost total and or so as systematic disordering disorientation?not much of the senses, at same time a Rimbaud proposed?but of syntax, the accompanied by demand for a re-orientation to a new, a "human universe." As we shall the is a in see, expanded syntax manifestation language of the post modern demand out of which any advance is made. The occurrence term I am aware earliest of the "postmodern" yet of 5 comes a era as in Olson's writing amid discussion of the modern "the in a to 9 age of quantity" letter Robert Creeley, August 1951, where he writes without further definition or elaboration: "I am led to this notion: world was two the post-modern projected by earlier facts," and on to goes cite the voyages of discovery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made "all the a which earth known quantity" and the develop ment of the machine in the nineteenth century. The term, however, more to appears elaborately and significantly in another letter Creeley some on days later, August 20, where Olson distinguishes "modern" man manner: . from the "post-modern" in the following "the modern he does ?o? to . call the universe." In other feel[s] belong .just, quick, it, is or words, he in familiar terms, alienated, "estranged from that with ismost which he familiar." Whereas, Olson continues, "my assumption is any POST-MODERN is born with the ancient confidence that, he It is same to does belong." this "ancient confidence" that enables Olson are or to begin "Human Universe" with "There laws," write those words which first to "I am Allen Ginsberg said attracted him Olson: one/with my skin." Indeed, it is the same confidence that enables Olson to name his hero, Maximus. to use term to Olson continues the "post-modern" in his letters to Creeley and Cid Corman from this time (1951-52), in his "Special View of History" lectures from 1956, and in essays like "The Law," which he saw as a to "Human Universe" Universe" sequel ("Human was itself almost entitled "The Laws"), from 3 October 1951. In it he men explores the question, "how did other than the modern (orWest writes ern) ground the apprehension of life," and in response, he of the as on first half of the present century "the marshalling yard which the was to we or modern turned what have, the post-modern, the post are West." Earlier in the piece, he had summarized what for him the characteristics of the Western inheritance which makes up modern man. our can as a First of all, history be viewed closed "box," from to As in roughly 500 B.C. 1950 A.D. "Human Universe," the fault lies to with the three "great Greeks," Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, who reason man gether invented the which has dominated and "from whom," a writes Olson, "it is always my argument, the 'West' followed." As the result of the development of abstract thought by Greeks, the poet West writes, "it is my impression that intellectual life in the has been to a and still great degree stays essentially descriptive and analytical." His a roots: conclusion is general renunciation of the West in its that 6 and of as Socrates (the generalizer) Thucydides (the proponent history an and that "the division of "truth," abstract) "date exactly together," FORM from CONTENT . follows" therefrom. And in this essay as as it is clear that the "Definitions by Undoings," from early 1952, is to "the Western for "post-modern" likewise opposed tradition," much the same reasons.6 new to Western culture. It on all the Now, it is nothing reject goes an come to time?and to such extent that the time has certainly reaffirm himself?in . this its accomplishments. Indeed, Olson railing against was or time it the East, those contemporaries who sought their practice or in East at whatever him ecstasy principally the (he railed gave energy, as out that the East of course, any high-spirited man)?pointed anything was or or a sense had to offer, whether it calm selflessness of the kalpa West or had.