Volumes One & Two
edited by John Clarke and Albert Glover
Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016.
For anyone with an interest in Olson of course this is indispensible - but also for anyone with an interest in how Corbin was read and understood by a generation of poets. Such a wonderful labor of love. And beautifully produced for a good reasonable price - these large and impressive volumes are a must have. - TC
While I have not read all the individual chapbooks in A Curriculum of the Soul Series, I have very much admired what Albert Glover is doing there and the way he is doing it.
Donald Allen
A Curriculum of the Soul series is, in my evaluation, one of the most impressive publishing ventures now under way among American small presses. It will be valuable to contemporary poets and readers in a number of ways.
Karl Young
The series is one of the more imaginative, certainly one of the best among scores in the small press world….Over the years A Curriculum of the Soul has included many of the major American poets, or, more particularly those whom are by now among the top voices familiar to those of us who read little magazines and keep-up with small press publications.
Bill Katz
Albert Glover’s publishing venture is one of the most ambitious and consistent of the past decade. The series of books, A Curriculum of the Soul, serves more than one function; as a whole, it advances the provocative theoretical thinking of Charles Olson, and as individual books it produces new poetic statements and works by writers who are among the best in the country.
Alan Davies
I find it difficult to imagine a more admirable project, one which is of value not only to us who read the fascicles as issued, but to the laymen and scholars of the future who will attempt to unravel this complicated age. …Such is the destiny of A Curriculum of the Soul, which is a work of art, gigantic in its conception, yet wonderfully accessible in its execution.
John Nomland
Reviewed by William Farrar on amazon:
After over 50 years, the Curriculum of the Soul has come out in an affordable trade copy. This work is an homage to the poet Charles Olson. Olson, who is known mainly for being a “Black Mountain” poet influenced by the style of Ezra Pound, was also known for creating the idea of projective verse, which discussed the centrality of breath as an organization structure of poetry. In the past decades, Olson’s reputation has taken some hits. A biography by Tom Clark (Allegory of a Poet) and the editing of Olson’s masterwork, the unfinished The Maximus Poems by George Butterick, created the image of a person whose muse was like Melville’s Ahab in Moby Dick: a dark, obsessed character whose life ended in the wreckage of an incomplete, unfulfillable vision. The Curriculum of the Soul, which was edited by Albert Glover and Jack Clarke points toward a different, more positive role of Olson in the American artistic landscape.
Glover and Clarke chose 28 words taken from a typescript by Olson called Curriculum of the Soul and assigned each one to a different poet or writer associated with Olson in some way, who produced a fascicle on one of the words. Contributors include poets such as Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser, and Joanne Kyger. These fascicles have been combined together and the individual contributors' name have been backgrounded.
The Curriculum exemplifies the ideals of a different Olson than can be found in Tom Clark’s biography. The Olson evoked by the contributor to these volumes is the Olson who dreamed of a “nation of nothing but poetry” and who mythologized his own vision Greek ideal of polis, an artist and teacher who imagined individuals coming together to create a collective work that transcended the individuality of a single creator’s ego. The Curriculum achieves this by presenting a work that has the feel of a single epic meditation composed of multiple voices. In a sense, the work functions like the poetic equivalent of the free jazz of the 60s.
Like free jazz- or any collective project- the work is uneven. There are notable moments in the work: moments of beauty and insight that capture the vibrant spirit that Olson’s writing and ideas point towards. But, there are also weaker, less committed contributions that provide very little to the whole. In addition, the work reveals some of the limits of the main era of its composition: it has a viewpoint that is predominantly male, white, and 70s in its consciousness (think of those old photographs with bell bottoms). In spite of these limitations, the work is valuable. It serves as a document of the evolution of poetry in 20th century America, a memorial to an influential post-WWII American poet. It is also an homage of perseverance, commitment and care on the part of its editors.
Volume One
Charles Olson
Albert Glover
Duncan McNaughton
John Wieners
Michael Boughn
Lisa Jarnot
Fred Wah
John Clarke
Robert Duncan
Alice Notley
Robin Blaser
Robert Dalke
George F. Butterick
Edward Kissam
Edgar Billowitz
Volume One
i THE MUSHROOM
ii DREAM
iii WOMAN
iv MIND
v LANGUAGE
vi EARTH
vii BLAKE
viii DANTE
ix HOMER’S ART
x BACH’S BELIEF
xi NOVALIS’ SUBJECTS
xii THE NORSE
xiii THE ARABS
xiv AMERICAN INDIANS
Volume Two
Harvey Brown
Lewis MacAdams, Jr
Ed Sanders
Michael Bylebyl
David Tirrell
Danny Zimmerman
Drummond Hadley
James Koller
Gerrit Lansing
Joanne Kyger
Robert Grenier
John Thorpe
Anselm Hollo
Michael McClure
Volume Two
xv JAZZ PLAYING
xvi DANCE
xvii EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS
xviii ISMAELI MUSLIMISM
xix ALCHEMY
xx PERSPECTIVE
xxi VISION
xxii MESSAGES
xxiii ANALYTIC PSYCHOLOGY
xxiv PHENOMENOLOGICAL
xxv MATTER
xxvi ATTENTIION
xxvii SENSATION
xxviii ORGANISM