An Open Map

The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson

Published by UNM Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

The correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson is one of the foundational literary exchanges of twentieth-century American poetry. The 130 letters collected in this volume begin in 1947 just after the two poets first meet in Berkeley, California, and continue to Olson’s death in January 1970. Both men initiated a novel stance toward poetry, and they matched each other with huge accomplishments, an enquiring, declarative intelligence, wide-ranging interests in history and occult literature, and the urgent demand to be a poet. More than a literary correspondence, An Open Map gives insight into an essential period of poetic advancement in cultural history.

Product Details

  • Publisher: UNM Press (December 15, 2017)
  • Length: 256 pages
  • ISBN13: 9780826358974

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Raves and Reviews

Invaluable archival documents. . . . Bertholf and Smith also supply a strong accounting of the context of Olson and Duncan's correspondence in their introduction to An Open Map.--Eric Keenaghan, Journal of Modern Literature

In these two companion volumes (An Open Map and Imagining Persons) . . . the letters are complete, the lectures are beveled, and a nimble apparatus of introductions, notes, glossaries, bibliographies, and indices nearly half as long as the texts themselves collapses the distance between these documents' moment and our own.
--Jacket2

In these two companion volumes (An Open Map and Imagining Persons) . . . the letters are complete, the lectures are beveled, and a nimble apparatus of introductions, notes, glossaries, bibliographies, and indices nearly half as long as the texts themselves collapses the distance between these documents' moment and our own.
--Jacket2

Arranged in five chronological sections, theirs was an often recondite correspondence, by turns cryptic or dramatic, essentially small essays on poetics and exchanges of latest works or comments on their reading. The letters are also full of affectionate greetings ('my dear Dunk') and humor.
--The Times Literary Supplement

An essential correspondence between two [of] the most innovative and visionary poets in American literature. In these letters is contained the generative energies of some of the best poetry written in the twentieth century.--Peter O'Leary, author of Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness

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More books in this series: Recencies Series: Research and Recovery in Twentieth-Century American Poetics

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