Olson, Physics and 'objectism.'

Olson, Physics and 'objectism.' This paper examines how the American poet Charles Olson was influenced by the discoveries of modern physics in his poetry and prose. Einstein's physics demanded a change in our imaginative picture of the world and poets were attracted to such his concepts as the loss of absolute space and time. Olson's seminal essay “Projective Verse” advances methods of understanding poetry which draws from Einstein's special theory of relativity. In addition, this paper discusses the ways Olson drew from quantum mechanics in writing his poetic theories by focusing on “uncertainty principle.” In the early modernism represented by Eliot, the subject’s relation to objects is generally considered as one of recognition or domination and is characterized by discontinuity. Olson tries to break down the subject's epistemological tower by saying “a man is himself an object.” Olson’s definition of “a poem as object” shifts our attention from the subject’s power to dominate an object to “a series of objects in field” including the self and the poem, and leads a new way of American poetry beyond modernism.