Michael Boughn on Charles Olson at the 1965 Berkeley Poetry Conference:
"The happening that Olson staged—and trust me, he knew exactly what he was doing—broke every rule of conference etiquette in the book. He got drunk in front of the audience. He wouldn’t read a whole poem all the way through. He continually followed the digressions of his thinking in order to be open to revelation rather than force his thinking into a proscribed etiquette. It was a ta’wil, a revelatory spiritual event, not a “reading,” and that really pissed a lot of people off, including good friends such as Duncan, who left. But Olson didn’t care. He saw what was coming. Have you been to one of those verbal circle jerks they call poetry readings these days? Talk about institutionalized, from the form—three readers, no more than 10-15 minutes to show your stuff, open mic at the end (the open mic is to be sure someone comes)—down to the generic poetry reading rhythm and the stifling silence of the audience. He tried to stop it before it took root, to smash the institution right there, on the spot."
from
with Michael Boughn and Kent Johnson conducted by Steven Manuel
in Chicago Review.
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