Charles Olson once defined "Muthologos" as "what is said about what is said," which encompasses a breadth of discourse that would define the near and far range of where the poet's mind went in a lifetime's intent to go places. In this new compilation of Olson's transcribed lectures and interviews, we finally get all of what is preserved of a life of talk, allowing Muthologos to stand, along with The Maximus Poems, Collected Poems, Collected Prose and Selected Letters as one of the "standard texts" of this great poet's oeuvre.
Ralph Maud's second edition of Muthologos, some thirty years after George Butterick's first, adds several new items: "At Goddard College, April 1962"; a second Vancouver 1963 discussion, "Duende, Muse, and Angel"; a short addition to the "BBC Interview"; a second "On Black Mountain"; a further hour of Olson's conversation with Herb Kenny; and a previously unavailable CBC interview. In addition, all the available tapes of these talks and interviews have been listened to again, and many of their previous transcription errors have been corrected. Textual notes to each piece identify these corrections, and also reveal the provenance of the tapes and the particular way in which each transcription was created.
"Maud depicts [Olson] `functioning remarkably as a public poet, a poet thinking on his feet, and being absolutely delightful."---Pacific Rim Review of Books
"...a balanced and superbly rendered picture of one of America's greatest poets."---Peter Anastas
"Rarely have letters been so crucial in a poet's life and no selection of them has ever made such fact more evident than does Ralph Maud's remarkable edition. The ranging, perceptive, various, and engaging nature of Olson's letters is in itself a wonder. Here Ralph Maud has composed them to make clear a life in all the reach of its encounters, in all the particulars of its company, and in the place determined as its own."---Robert Creeley
"An important book assembled with great intelligence, tact, taste and professionalism"---Donald Allen
Industry Reviews
"Maud depicts [Olson] functioning remarkably as a public poet, a poet thinking on his feet, and being absolutely delightful." -- Pacific Rim Review of Books "This new edition of Muthologos reiterates the intensity of attention that Olson brought to his final six years in the public performance of his immense poetic archaeology. These talks and interviews document the processual nature and intellectual hunger that situate his poetic imagination not only in the poem but in the range of perception that can be talked about "with some life." When I heard him talk about his poem "Place; & Names" at UBC in 1963, the poem as discourse for place and history provided a crucial tap for my own sense of poetry's possibility. His Beloit lectures on "The Dogmatic Nature of Experience" in 1968 coalesce and amplify his most singular pedagogy, "Projective Verse," as the cultural shape shifter it has been. By re-inserting, and supplementing, the tape-recorded era of Olson's poetic life, Ralph Maud continues to sustain this material as consequential and amazing." -- Fred Wah
