Muthologos: The Collected Lectures and Interviews, Volume II (Writing 35)

217 pp. Volume II only. Charles Olson's insistence that the public value of any articulation is inseparable from the particulars of the time and place of its origins resulted in the proprioceptive methodology of his composition--in his speech and his writing, in both poetry and prose. Olson did not "lecture"--he "talked." His encyclopedic knowledge of the subjects that interested him engaged in a manner always as surprising to himself as to his listeners. This element of discovery was to him a true measure of what is authentic in language, and it exhibits itself most in the impromptu exchanges of which Muthologos is mainly composed. Olson once de'ned "Muthologos" as "what is said about what is said," which encompasses a breadth of discourse that would de'ne the near and far range of where the poet's mind went ...