How do readers approach the enigmatic and unnavigable modernist long poem? Taking as the form's exemplars the highly influential but critically contentious poetries of John Cage and Charles Olson, this book considers indeterminacy – the fundamental feature of the long poem – by way of its analogues in musicology, mycology, cybernetics and philosophy. It addresses features of these works that figure broadly in the long poem tradition, such as listing, typography, archives, mediation and mereology, while articulating how both poets broke with the longform poetic traditions of the early 1900s. Brendan C. Gillott argues for Cage's and Olson's centrality to these traditions – in developing, critiquing and innovating on the longform poetics of the past, their work revolutionized the longform poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Author of The Maximus Poems, Rector of Black Mountain College, and quondam Democratic Party activist, Charles Olson is one of the central figures of mid-twentieth-century American poetry. Charles Olson: A Poetâ (TM)s Prose is the first book-length critical study to focus strictly on Olsonâ (TM)s prose, ranging from his groundbreaking study of Melville, Call Me Ishmael (1947), through such seminal work as â oeProjective Verseâ (1950), â oeHuman Universeâ (1951), The Special View of History (1956, 1970), â oeEqual, That Is, to the Real Itselfâ (1958), and Proprioception (1962). The eleven essays collected in this volume introduce a new generation of scholars who engage Olsonâ (TM)s thinking on gender and sexuality, human ecology, the relevance of non-Euclidean geometry and quantum physics for poetics, phenomenology and Whiteheadâ (TM)s process philosophy, and postmodernism. Olson thinks and writes against the grain of the established authorities in poetry and literary criticism, and his influence on American letters has been broad and varied. Like some Old Testament prophet or Melvilleâ (TM)s Ishmael, Olson projects a voice that is immediately distinctive, sometimes disturbing, always provocative, and often compelling. To begin to understand postmodern American poetry, one must begin with Charles Olson.

Io Anthology celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of this formative journal and commemorates its role in opening a path to decades of innovative publishing. Bringing together in one volume the quirky blend of artistic and scholarly writing that characterized the literary journal, this book is a “greatest hits” collection of the major pieces published from 1965 to 1993. It features very early work from Stephen King, Gary Snyder, Jayne Anne Phillips, and many others, with forewords by writer and filmmaker Miranda July and historical ecologist Robin Grossinger, the daughter and son of the editors, who grew up with Io and were in part initiated in their careers by its household presence. Io forged an eclectic path through the upheaveals of the 1960s in art, literature, science, and the life of the spirit with writing that embraced astrophysics, science fiction, parapsychology, topology, poetry from Black Mountain, Beat, and New American traditions, wisdom from Hopi and Iglulik elders, homeopathy, hermetics, alchemy and the occult, astrology, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism. Portraying the roots and spirit which impelled Io to evolve into a publishing company, this volume shows the seriousness and depth of content which continues to enliven North Atlantic Books.