At Last!!! ... (Notes on Corbin & Poetry #??...)

A Curriculum Of The Soul

Volumes One & Two

edited by John Clarke and Albert Glover

Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016.

on amazon

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