"A Life of Olson & a Sequence of Glyphs is equal parts oracular biography and ocular surfeit, as if Ed Sanders' lines of bios ("life") were translating from a dead language into life his hand-drawn graphia ("to record by lines drawn"). Olson has never ceased calling the poet to see for oneself-and Sanders lets us see Olson for ourselves, through his almost tactile trove of glyphs, documents, and data clusters. This is a method familiar to readers of Sanders' recent illustrated biography of RFK and admirers of classics like 1968"--

A nail-biting tale of survival and brotherhood atop one of the world's most dangerous mountains. This fast-paced, three-part narrative takes readers on three expeditions over 15 years to K2, one of the deadliest mountains on Earth. Roped together, these teams of men face perilously high altitudes and battering storms in hopes of reaching the summit. As each expedition sets out, they carve new paths along icy slopes and unforgiving rock, creating camps on ledges so narrow they fear turning over in their sleep. But disaster strikes -- in 1939, four men never make it down the mountain. Fourteen years later, a man develops blood clots in his legs at 25,000 feet, leaving his team with no safe path off the mountain. Filled with displays of incredible strength and heart-stopping danger, Into the Clouds tells the incredible stories of the men whose quest to conquer a mountain became a battle to survive the descent.

LIFE IS A RIP OFF: THE COMPLETE BOOK is 404 pages and 12 months of record reviews--one record a day, every day, for one year. Yes, John "Inzane" Olson aka Inzane Johnny of Wolf Eyes aka American Tapes did that. And he reviewed everything from death metal demo cassettes to the Staples Singers' gospel. Enter into the OLZONE and find out about music you've never known, bands from places that you've never heard, and then read his review of classic rock cornerstones such as KANSAS. Reading LRIP will make you re-realize why blues is relevant, why every punk band in America matters, why jazz is good for the heart, and metal will always ride by your side. "To write music op-ed this good, you have to tap the primordial sap sack, to butterfly stroke the ancient ooze of tune begatment, cave dwell with the knuckle draggers, scratch symbols into the dirt with the freaks and make it rain. He do and it did."--Henry Rollins "[Life is a Rip Off] is the best way [John Olson] can add another cubist layer to the sound and visuality he's already presented for the last twenty or so years. He's sharing something the people who don't know him personally don't get enough of--his textual, syntactical brain, stained as it is with dollar-store spray paint."-- Ben Hell Hall, Detroit artist. "When John agreed to write a record review a day, back in 20xx, I wasn't too keen on the idea. Not because I didn't think he could do it - but that I knew he would do it, even if it became a years-long all-encompassing obsessive task."--Tovah Olson, The Dead Machines. "[John Olson] didn't just introduce me to different worlds, the man introduced me to entire universes."--Bryan Ramirez, Killertrees Records

An incandescent biography of the inventor of "projective" verse, this comprehensive portrait distinguishes the convivial, bluff public figure from the tormented inner man. A lapsed Catholic, Olson (1910-1970) turned to Sumerian myths, Mayan legends and Islamic mysticism for cosmic insights that would inform poems of cyclic sweep. Torn by contradictory feelings toward his proud, stern father—a Swedish immigrant postman in Worcester, Mass.—the poet found a father-figure in mentor Edward Dahlberg and later in Ezra Pound. Reclusive self-absorption sapped his two common law marriages; he harbored enormous guilt over his neglect of his two children and over second wife Betty Kaiser's death (in a car accident), which may have been self-inflicted during a severe depression. Clark, author of books on Kerouac, Celine and Ted Berrigan, reveals that Olson grappled with homosexual impulses, took hallucinogens and dominated those around him, seeking periodic release from inner demons in frenzied floods of images.

Breath of Wilderness is the story of Olson's love for wild places and how that love transformed his life, inspiring him to play a key role in the movement to preserve wilderness throughout North America, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the largest lakeland wilderness in the country.

For Charles Olson, letters were not only a daily means of communication with friends but were at the same time a vehicle for exploratory thought. In fact, many of Olson's finest works, including Projective Verse and the Maximus Poems, were formulated as letters. Olson's letters are important to an understanding of his definition of the postmodern, and through the play of mind exhibited here we recognize him as one of the vital thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume, edited and annotated by Ralph Maud, we see Olson at the height of his powers and also at his most human. Nearly 200 letters, selected from a known 3,000, demonstrate the wide range of Olson's interests and the depth of his concern for the future. Maud includes letters to friends and loved ones, job and grant applications, letters of recommendation, and Black Mountain College business letters, as well as correspondence illuminating Olson's poetics. As we read through the letters, which span the years from 1931, when Olson was an undergraduate, to his death in 1970, a fascinating portrait of this complex poet and thinker emerges.