Selected Writings Of Charles Olson

Covering the fundamentals of stochastic processes, this title includes the basics of Poisson processes, Markov chains, branching processes, martingales, and diffusion processes. It presents a unique blend of theory and applications, with special emphasis on mathematical modelling, computational techniques and examples from the biological sciences. It is appropriate for students in applied mathematics, biostatistics, computational biology, computer science, physics, and statistics.

The prose writings of Charles Olson (1910–1970) have had a far-reaching and continuing impact on post-World War II American poetics. Olson's theories, which made explicit the principles of his own poetics and those of the Black Mountain poets, were instrumental in defining the sense of the postmodern in poetry and form the basis of most postwar free verse. The Collected Prose brings together in one volume the works published for the most part between 1946 and 1969, many of which are now out of print. A valuable companion to editions of Olson's poetry, the book backgrounds the poetics, preoccupations, and fascinations that underpin his great poems. Included are Call Me Ishmael, a classic of American literary criticism; the influential essays "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe"; and essays, book reviews, and Olson's notes on his studies. In these pieces one can trace the development of his new science of man, called "muthologos," a radical mix of myth and phenomenology that Olson offered in opposition to the mechanistic discourse and rationalizing policy he associated with America's recent wars in Europe and Asia. Editors Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander offer helpful annotations throughout, and poet Robert Creeley, who enjoyed a long and mutually influential relationship with Olson, provides the book's introduction.

"This is the first presentation in depth of the work of one of the most influential writers of modern France, Jules Supervielle (1884-1960). Up to now, only an occasional selection has appeared in an anthology, and he is still little known to American readers. Yet Supervielle is one of the unique creators of our time. His fables have the clear-eyed, slightly wry vision of the intelligent child. His poems have a Iucidity of language that throws new light on each word, each thought. In his novel The Man Who Stole Children, complete in this volume, he uses the fantastic premise that a child uncared for by its parents may simply be picked up off the street and adopted, to illuminate man's problems of human behavior and emotion. Supervielle in his poetry and prose, as in his personal influence on other writers, is quiet, unassuming, matter-of-fact. There is a quietness, too, almost an impersonality about his approach to life and the events of every day. His poems are statements and almost never is there the fireworks of imagery or startling figure of speech that one associates with some twentieth-century schools of writing. Throughout his work may be felt the vast spaces of Uruguay, where he was born, and of the sea, a pervading symbol. This edition contains eight of his stories. translated by Enid McLeod, more than forty of his poems with French text en face translated by James Kirkup, Denise Levertov, and Kenneth Rexroth, and the complete novel, Le Voleur d'enfants, translated by Alan Pryce-Jones"--Publisher.

For Charles Olson, letters were not only a daily means of communication with friends but were at the same time a vehicle for exploratory thought. In fact, many of Olson's finest works, including Projective Verse and the Maximus Poems, were formulated as letters. Olson's letters are important to an understanding of his definition of the postmodern, and through the play of mind exhibited here we recognize him as one of the vital thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume, edited and annotated by Ralph Maud, we see Olson at the height of his powers and also at his most human. Nearly 200 letters, selected from a known 3,000, demonstrate the wide range of Olson's interests and the depth of his concern for the future. Maud includes letters to friends and loved ones, job and grant applications, letters of recommendation, and Black Mountain College business letters, as well as correspondence illuminating Olson's poetics. As we read through the letters, which span the years from 1931, when Olson was an undergraduate, to his death in 1970, a fascinating portrait of this complex poet and thinker emerges.

Covering the fundamentals of stochastic processes, this title includes the basics of Poisson processes, Markov chains, branching processes, martingales, and diffusion processes. It presents a unique blend of theory and applications, with special emphasis on mathematical modelling, computational techniques and examples from the biological sciences. It is appropriate for students in applied mathematics, biostatistics, computational biology, computer science, physics, and statistics.

"I have assumed a great deal in the selection of the poems from such a large and various number, making them a discourse unavoidably my own as well as any Olson himself might have chosen to offer. I had finally no advice but the long held habit of our using one another, during his life, to act as a measure, a bearing, an unabashed response to what either might write or say."—Robert Creeley A seminal figure in post-World War II literature, Charles Olson has helped define the postmodern sensibility. His poetry embraces themes of empowering love, political responsibility, the wisdom of dreams, the intellect as a unit of energy, the restoration of the archaic, and the transformation of consciousness—all carried in a voice both intimate and grand, American and timeless, impassioned and coolly demanding. In this selection of some 70 poems, Robert Creeley has sought to present a personal reading of Charles Olson's decisive and inimitable work—"unequivocal instances of his genius"—over the many years of their friendship.