Charles Stein

I probably 1st encountered the poetry of Charles Olson in 1974 thru The Fugs' 2nd album (released on ESP in 1966). Ed Sanders, of The Fugs, another poet or "bard" as he describes himself, often used poetry he liked as the lyrics in extremely primitive song settings - extremely primitive but full of spirit. There was "Ah! Sunflower Weary of Time" (words by William Blake), "Swineburn Stomp" (A.C.Swineburn), "How Sweet I Roamed from Field to Field" (Blake).. & "I Want to Know" (using poetry from Charles Olson's "The Maximus Poems II"):

"We drink
or break open
our veins solely
to know."

That song has stuck in my head for decades now & I've often sung it to myself in a fragmented way. That made me interested in Olson so I read poetry of his from time to time but I don't recall it ever doing much for me & I never read an entire bk of it. Olson was also the rector of Black Mountain College from 1951 to 1956 - another thing that made me interested in him.

5 yrs later, my friend Chris Mason started the Widemouth Tapes label & agreed to publish a tape that had one side by poet/scholar Charles Stein. Shortly thereafter, I took over the label &, thusly, took over the responsibility of publishing that tape (see tape 8621 listed here: http://www.fyi.net/~anon/WdmUCatalog.html). In these days there was somewhat of a connection between Station Hill Press (the publisher of this bk & many other bks by Stein) & Widemouth insofar as several of the tapes were recorded at Station Hill, etc.. I still run Widemouth (albeit in a somewhat unenergetic way) 30 yrs later. That was probably my 1st introduction to Stein.

"The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum - The poetic cosmology of Charles Olson & his use of the writings of C. G. Jung" is, if I understand correctly, Stein's dissertation for his PHD - & a remarkably erudite & scholarly work it is, indeed.

Over the yrs since I 1st encountered Stein's work thru the Widemouth tape, I discovered that he played clarinet on many a Franz Kamin piece (Franz is one of my favorite composers & Widemouth published one of his few audio releases - see tape 8622 on the above-mentioned webpage) & that he edited an issue of "IO" that had something by Henry Flynt in it (a concept artist of interest to me).

As for Jung? Well.. I never had much interest in him OR Freud - arguably the 2 most prominent figures of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. Why? I'm not sure I can put my finger on WHY. Perhaps I've just never been much interested in such analysis in general - being much more interested in art & music & political theory & being kept very busy by those. Jung always had the reputation of being less 'stodgy' than Freud, full of less sexually obsessive ideas. References to Jungian Archetypes were somewhat vaguely intriquing - but I think it all smacked too much of 'armchair' & too little of actually getting things done off the page - wch, despite my intense intellectual interests, was always at the forefront of my philosophy.

On April 11, 2010, Franz Kamin & his longtime friend & fellow composer Sarmad Brody died in a car crash & I decided to make a documentary about Franz & his work (see the many relevant shorts on my YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/onesownthoughts). This led me to Station Hill to interview old associates of Kamin's - wch included Stein. Hence, after /- 30 yrs of knowing about Stein I finally met him.

In the process of a group discussion at Station Hill re Kamin for my documentary (called "DEPOT (wherein resides the UNDEAD of Franz Kamin)"), Stein talked a little about Kamin's response to Stein's work. He commented that he doubted that Kamin had ever read "The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum" - probably b/c of a lack of interest in the subject. That struck me as a shame given that Stein had played in many a Kamin piece & had otherwise supported his work. SO, I decided to read it in Kamin's stead - & the Station Hill publishers were kind enuf to give me a copy.

I have the utmost respect for scholarly works - even those on subjects I'm not necessarily that interested in. IF SOMEONE'S GOING TO TAKE THE TROUBLE TO WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING THAT HAS DEEP CONTENT, ONE CAN ONLY HOPE THAT SOMEONE'S GOING TO WRITE ABOUT IT DEEPLY - & that's certainly the case here. This is no half-assed study, Stein truly cares about the subject & takes us places w/ it that perhaps no-one else wd - & that makes this a valuable bk.

W/ that sd, reading this didn't necessarily make me any more interested in Olson or Jung than I already was. In fact, it firmly established for me that Olson is a type of poet for whom I have very little entry point.

Once upon a time, there may've been a canon of work to be studied that created an education central to the elite(s) that had access to such education. Greek & Latin were de rigueur & "the classics" were probably clearly established. But there was a problem: the canon was a canon that reinforced the worldview of the elites that studied the canon. It's my hope that this canon has been somewhat deconstructed in the last 50 yrs or so. There're now black studies & women's studies & gay studies that might've been excluded 100 yrs ago as utterly unacceptable. Perhaps this is just a myth, perhaps all sorts on info made its way into universities 100 yrs ago that I'm unaware of.

Whatever the case, it's my impression that Olson's poetry, at least The Maximus Poems under discussion in Stein's bk, is deeply rooted in an intertextuality that's not likely to be understood by anyone w/o the same reading background. Under Special Vocabulary Sources (p17) of Stein's bk, Stein writes: "In The Maximus Poems and elsewhere, Olson frequently uses terms taken from technical or otherwise specialized contexts. [..] Thus the reader, depending on the [non-technical] dictionary, may miss the special sense in which the term is used". I'm not necessarily opposed to this & wd probably enjoy pushing such obscurity as far as my sense of humor cd manage but I have to question how much it suited Olson's purposes or whether he just allowed his scholarliness to override his broader senses of purpose.

Basically, it seems to me that many creative people have theories that they use to steer their creative output (& philosophies to steer their ethics) & that these theories are often formed at great loss to 'realistic' thinking. Olson's probably most well-known for his theory of "Projective Verse". Stein writes (p25): "The term is never defined in the course of Olson's essay. It is clear, however, that the poet uses it along with the phrase "composition by field" to distinguish the poetry which interests him from rhymed and formally metricized verse."

& on p60 Stein presents Olson's argument for non-metrical verse in terms of Non-Euclidean Geometry. I can certainly see the 'validity' of this argument but I think that the time for its 'necessity' as a justifying argument is past - or, at least, of not enuf interest to me, personally, to be worth bothering w/. To divide poetry into rhymed vs 'free' is of as little interest to me as most other dichotomies. In a world reduced to idiocies like 'Capitalism vs Communism are the only options & Capitalism has won!' I'll take option #1,234,567.89X please.

On p25 again, Stein quotes Olson as writing:

"A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it [..] all the way over to, the reader. Thus the poem itself must, at all points, be a high-energy construct and, at all points, an energy discharge."

Okey-dokey, but does Olson's hyper-intertextuality & obscurity of reference allow for an "energy discharge" for anyone other than those rare few who have roots in the same literary background(s)?! I think not. I think it's just self-deluding wishful thinking. Like much theory. P38: Stein discussing Jung: "The realization of the archetypal image (through fantasy, art, or action) is the psyche's supreme goal. Through the attainment of this realization it achieves the integration of the instinct into the personality." That's all well & good & I'm sure that Jung was a very smart guy but, hey!, this is just one person's opinion & it has very little relevance to day-to-day life IMO. In other words, that & 50¢ won't even get you a cup of coffee anymore - unless you're on a college campus (maybe).

But, so what?, right? Why am I 'picking on' this? After all, Jung was being an intellectual, Olson was being an intellectual, Stein's being an intellectual. I like intellectualism, I like intellectuals, I'm an intellectual - but as a person existing mostly outside the world of intellectuals, as a person who has to get food & shelter & whatnot, I find Ivory Tower intellectualism more than a bit grating at times. Some intellectuals make sweeping generalizations about the world around them while they live safely in a world of constructs that's far more invested in privilege than most wd like to admit or wd ever psychoanalyze - such analysis being a taboo of sorts - one that I frequently break.

One theme that runs throughout this is that of libidinal regression wch I take to be (perhaps incorrectly) a form of self-building introversion that can be constructive rather than pathological. P58: "One important function of analytical psychology as Jung sees it is to provide an intellectual context in which such projection [of the archetypes] can take place, and the flow of libidinal energy continue its regression."

Here's where I can perhaps clarify my previous statement re whether Olson "just allowed his scholarliness to override his broader senses of purpose." P69: "Olson wishes to ensure the power of his images by an adherence to concrete, factual, perceptual, spatio-temporal data." This strategy is reinforced by Jung in Stein's telling of it: "The alchemists, Jung tells us in Psychology and Alchemy, "perished in their own obscurity" (p 217) when they abandoned the concrete laboratory". I think my point here is much the same: Olson supposedly sought concretion but completely wallowed in obscurity. Don't misunderstand: I LIKE obscurity - I just don't want to delude myself that it's the ideal medium for maximum "energy discharge" - as I think Olson might've.

P78: "The types of Maximus are often as not outsiders, wanderers, men whose own capacities are not quite suited to the age in which they live, and who, because of their skills and strengths, threaten or otherwise alienate the men of their own time. They are, like the Jungian hero, separated from "tribe" or "family," and pass beyond the limit of the familiar world."

Indeed. But we come back to the Ivory Tower. On pp94-97, the idea of how poetry & other intellections can constitute political action. P96: "political action itself is understood as taking place on the plane of the creation of images of the possible." That's all well & good but few people other than Leadbelly & Genet ever got out of prison b/c of the quality of their images. I think that creating "images of the possible" is very important - but I think it's most important when it stimulates the imaginations of people who might get insufficient stimulation otherwise - & these folks, IMO, are not likely to be readers of Olson OR Jung.

P97: "This discovery [of the archetypal background of his own psyche in Olson's poetic process] is conceived by Olson as a kind of political action ". Yeah, yeah: I agree: it IS a kind of political action - just one that's taken in the safety of academia that accomplishes next-to-nothing in the larger world of harsh injustice.

P105: "Olson quotes passages from Edward Sapir's Language to the effect that "word order and stress" are "the primary methods for expression of all syntactical relations"" & that's most likely a very key & keen observation. Somehow, I suspect, though, that Sapir's emphasis here had more to do w/ spoken language & that the written word, Olson's primary medium, is subject to somewhat different rules.

The thing is, poets want to write poetry & that's what their justifications are going to tend toward. But my friend Amy Catanzano, a poet, & I often speculate about whether many things written as poems really 'need' to BE poems. Take Olson's "The Cow of Dogtown" (pp121-124). In it, as Stein notes: Olson "guides us through an account by the geo-historian Shaler, of how the "top of Dogtown" comes to be both lifted up above the rest of the terrain and possessed of good topsoil" & I found that quite interesting. But did that info being presented to me in poetic form improve on its presentation? I think not. I wd've preferred Olson's poetic content as an essay.

To be my own Devil's Advocate, I usually complain about music w/ lyrics as often best presented w/ the lyrics separate from the music in written form - but the only Olson poetry I remember at all I remember b/c of its inclusion in a Fugs song.

While I don't feel particularly motivated to read more Olson or Jung after reading Stein's bk, I DO have an increasing interest in Avicenna, whose name & ideas keep popping up in various things that I read - in this case by reference to Henry Corbin's Avicenna and the Visionary Recital.

P148: "The diagram is the world and the world is the diagram." Wikipedia: "Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory," encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself." I think both positions are interesting & useful but I tend to agree more w/ Korzybski & this reinforces my suspicion that Olson's wish to be "concrete" is undermined by his own Ivory Tower literary perspective.

P163 in Stein's "Epilogue": "Olson insists that the most auspicious relation to objects [..] is that an object "impinges on us by its self-existence, without reference to any other thing."" & this is where Olson's poetics may've lead the way for such things as Concrete Poetry - but never really got there itself.

This is an excellent bk, far more excellent than my meager review of it, but my enthusiasm for Olson is considerably less than Stein's at the end of reading it.… (altro)