I just wanted to add my own sense of loss at Ed Dorn's passing. Though I
hadn't seen him for many, many years I can never forget his personal
kindness and he continues to have a huge influence in my life.
Without wanting either to add to the general level of flak in the air
around the character and work of Charles Olson or to become an extra in the
'burn the witch' scene fom Monty Python & the Holy Grail, I'm bound to say
that a number of received ideas about him --including his supposed
predilection towards the rhapsodic (read _naively_ optimistic) can be traced
back to the influence of a decade-old american biography.
Whatever its journalistic virtues of readability & other incidental
qualities, this book was definitively discredited for me in a review by
editor John Clarke, in _Intent: Letter of talk, thinking & document_
,Buffalo ( an issue _subsequent to_ the Summer/Fall 1991, issue). ( See
also Ralph Maud's piece in _Minutes of the Charles Olson Society #9, Aug.
1995, available 1104 Maple St., Vancouver BC V6J 3RG).
Having spent much time & effort 17 years earlier, vainly trying to
persuade the future author of Olson's qualities, I resisted friends' advice
to collaborate with his request to recount memories of a five-day visit with
Olson at New Year, 1966. The result was a 'creative' account of events--
telescoping five days by implication to 48 hours-- in the fine excess
tradition of the tabloids, heavy reliance on a relative of CO's, who came in
once , & then again 3 days later; none at all obviously--hardly his fault--
on the several friends who dropped in from time to time. But it made a good
story. On my mind because I'm reading the book for the first time, and
because my experience of Olson then coincides with Robert Kelly's account.
Whenever I'm in danger of being intimidated by the list of revered and
loved figures who did contribute, I take comfort from the absence, for
whatever reason, of two names. One I've just named, the other is the author
of _Pearls that were_
Best,
JT
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