Charles Olson: Call Him Ishmael

Biographies & Memoirs

Christensen, Paul

Arts & Literature

University of Texas Press

A haunting tableau of a lost world...from the author of 'The Hungry Wolves of Van Diemen’s Land' comes this unforgettable portrait of an era now lost forever. 'The Thresher' chronicles the 1980s and ‘90s, as seen through the eyes of ambitious young men who rebel, using the form of rebellion most common at the time: being in a band. No mere exercise in nostalgia, 'The Thresher' is an exploration of the conflict between individualism, nationalism and globalism, and of the role of art in an increasingly sterile and conformist modern world.

The Thresher

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Snows of Tomorrow

In this, the first full-length study of Clayton Eshleman's poetry, poet and scholar Paul Christensen descends into the torch-lit underworld, the cave of the soul, that Eshleman has been exploring in his work for more than three decades. "In the caves of Dordogne," Christensen writes, "Eshleman discovered an underworld in actuality, a labyrinth in which Paleolithic humanity daubed and slashed their marks, their primordial psychic images." He also found a controlling metaphor for all his mature poetry: "For Eshleman, these markings were a first language, and they represent the primal separation between sleep and waking," between the darkness of pre-consciousness and the light of self-awareness, between the amoral animal (which simply "is") and the guilty man (who is tortured by the realization "I am"). More than a penetrating study of Eshleman and his mythmaking, Minding the Underworld is an exploration of Eshleman's poetic generation. Eshleman is perhaps the most accomplished of a group of poets, sometimes called the "deep imagists," whose "critical interests and artistic vision arose in the early days of postmodern thought and have worked out in common many of the main themes of postmodernism in their poetry." The artistic father of this group is Charles Olson; its many members include Robert Kelly, Diane Wakoski, Jerome Rothenberg, Armand Schwerner, and David Antin. "To treat the themes and strategies of Eshleman is, in a way, to deal with all the other figures in his circle as well. Despite all their individual differences . . . they follow a similar program of psychological self-analysis and mythopoeic critique of contemporary life." They are, in Christensen's view, "the only real extensions of postmodern writing after Olson." Eshleman's search for a "way out" of modern life, which led him to conceive of the underworld as pre-consciousness, joins his work not only to his fellow "deep imagists" but also to a much larger force within experimental writing of this era - "the postmodern revival of pagan thought and the wisdom of the dream." "It is Eshleman's peculiar minding of that underworld of the self," Christensen concludes, "that is his unique poetic achievement."

Minding the Underworld: Clayton Eshleman & Late Postmodernism

History & Criticism

Black Sparrow Press

In this, the first full-length study of Clayton Eshleman's poetry, poet and scholar Paul Christensen descends into the torch-lit underworld, the cave of the soul, that Eshleman has been exploring in his work for more than three decades. "In the caves of Dordogne," Christensen writes, "Eshleman discovered an underworld in actuality, a labyrinth in which Paleolithic humanity daubed and slashed their marks, their primordial psychic images." He also found a controlling metaphor for all his mature poetry: "For Eshleman, these markings were a first language, and they represent the primal separation between sleep and waking," between the darkness of pre-consciousness and the light of self-awareness, between the amoral animal (which simply "is") and the guilty man (who is tortured by the realization "I am"). More than a penetrating study of Eshleman and his mythmaking, Minding the Underworld is an exploration of Eshleman's poetic generation. Eshleman is perhaps the most accomplished of a group of poets, sometimes called the "deep imagists," whose "critical interests and artistic vision arose in the early days of postmodern thought and have worked out in common many of the main themes of postmodernism in their poetry." The artistic father of this group is Charles Olson; its many members include Robert Kelly, Diane Wakoski, Jerome Rothenberg, Armand Schwerner, and David Antin. "To treat the themes and strategies of Eshleman is, in a way, to deal with all the other figures in his circle as well. Despite all their individual differences . . . they follow a similar program of psychological self-analysis and mythopoeic critique of contemporary life." They are, in Christensen's view, "the only real extensions of postmodern writing after Olson." Eshleman's search for a "way out" of modern life, which led him to conceive of the underworld as pre-consciousness, joins his work not only to his fellow "deep imagists" but also to a much larger force within experimental writing of this era - "the postmodern revival of pagan thought and the wisdom of the dream." "It is Eshleman's peculiar minding of that underworld of the self," Christensen concludes, "that is his unique poetic achievement."

Minding the Underworld: Clayton Eshleman and Late Postmodernism

Black Sparrow Pr

Like many a pioneer exiting the eastern forests, Paul Christensen felt the strangeness of an alien landscape when he first arrived in Texas in 1974. Schooled in the cool colors of life and poetry in the urban East, he approached his new career in the Southwest with missionary zeal and purpose: to discover the land and the kind of people and poetry it produced. West of the American Dream is a multifaceted account of that search. Christensen shares his feelings of culture shock in eastcentral Texas as he meets the cowboy version of the bluecollar Texan and his Mexican American neighbors. He introduces readers to the convoluted history of poetry in Texas, a tradition, started by women, that shifted from a focus on the land to the quotidian habits of urban living. Using a unique dissection of the public ritual of a poetry reading, Christensen assesses the origins of modern poetry, the value of imagination in modernist and postmodernist verse, and what Texas poets achieved and how their work evolved after World War II. Taking a break here and there to describe characters who crossed his path and who embodied different aspects of Texas mythology, Christensen then presents three portraits of modern Texas artist/poets—Vassar Miller, Charles Gordone, and Ricardo Sánchez—to show the results of twentiethcentury poetic evolution in Texas. He concludes that in order for Texas poetry to achieve maturity and fulfillment, writers must turn away from selfreflection and become "new Whitmans" who will instill moral passion and delight into poems that offer a vision of nature and a sense of responsibility for the earth. West of the American Dream will find an appreciative audience in all readers who respect the deep purpose of environmental action and the important role poets can play in its nurture, in Texas and elsewhere.

West of the American Dream: An Encounter with Texas (Volume 14) (Tarleton State University Southwestern Studies in the Humanities)

Texas A&M University Press

Weights and measures: Selected poems

Reference

University Editions

Weaving a fascinating dialogue between the Old World as represented by Provence and the New World of the postmodern American university, this memoir describes in finely wrought detail a poet and critic of literary postmodernism moving his family to France and experiencing village life. Stories of amazing adjustments to a wildly different world are etched in beautiful prose, reading like a quest novel, a precise travelogue, an intense discourse on the visionary arts, and a rediscovery—if not reinvention—of the self as this contemporary American intellectual finds enlightenment in exile.

Strangers in Paradise: A Memoir of Provence

Wings Press

From the Chihuahuan deserts of Mexico to the cellars of the Pentagon and the flaming ruins of Iraq, this poetry compilation merges the personal with the political. While retaining an intimate and unembellished tone, it confronts topical issues—notably the United States' wars abroad—and explores various universal themes, including aging, coping honestly with regret, dealing with fear, and desiring forgiveness. Powerful and lyric, these poems cut to the heart of the often painful, difficult, and deceptive human condition.

The Human Condition: New Poems

Poetry

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Books by Christensen, Paul