Charles Olson

Olson spoke of the "posing of the self on the surface of the poem," while calling on the poem "to take its place alongside the things of nature."

A poem is a difficult thing to make. Only those who try to make a poem know how difficult the making is, since the poem cannot really try to be made but demands the trying.

We're not meant for transcendence, that's why it's so difficult to write poetry and why poets are so rare. That we're not meant for transcendence, while possessing some sort of cellular propensity for it, explains also why so much poetry is written and why there are so many poets--the promise of some sort of transcendence, if only the transcendence of expressing something previously unexpressed, the serious thrill of bringing something new into the world that deserves entry.

There's a reason too we tell lies to one another: to come alive again by bringing treasure back from the dead; to find the voice of a thing that otherwise has none; to make a new life for ourselves in what sounds good and possible about us; to live if only for a few moments in what we didn't know about ourselves before we started speaking.