2026-09-23T01:44:13Zhttps://ubir.buffalo.edu/oai/request

oai:ubir.buffalo.edu:10477/781042025-09-18T03:14:43Zcom_10477_77914col_10477_77915

Charles Olson and Jack Spicer: A Comparative Study of the Poetics of the Outside Hathaway, Christopher Solomon, William English American literature literature Charles Olson and Jack Spicer pioneered innovative poetic techniques and engineered novel theoretical perspectives in direct opposition to the dominate intellectual paradigms of midcentury North American academia, the reverberations of which can still be felt in contemporary poetics today. Utilizing language against itself and employing a poetics situated in relation to bodily and aural perception, rather than the ocular model of artistic expression of the Western tradition, Olson and Spicer, respectively, theorize a poetics of the Outside through which the poet is able to compose verse in such a way as to work against the self and thereby gain access to the always-already polyvocality inherent in all language. Through their respective praxes, which are rooted in mutual interests in Mythos and Logos, Olson and Spicer turned their attentions to the polis as the site upon which a living poetry might be implemented, employing a poetics of place which see them take on the role of ethnographers of the imaginary. Although it can be argued that both poets failed in this regard, Spicer reminds us that all art entails failure, while Olson marches onward into the nuclear age, as a paternal figure for science-oriented poetries. 2018-06-28T20:34:08Z 2018-06-28T20:34:08Z 2018-06-28T20:34:08Z 2018 Text Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/10477/78104 eng Copyright retained by author. Users of works found in University at Buffalo Institutional Repository (UBIR) are responsible for identifying and contacting the copyright owner for permission to reuse. University at Buffalo Libraries do not manage rights for copyright-protected works and cannot assist with permissions. State University of New York at Buffalo