While the poetics of the Cascadia Poetics Lab have not been systematized, one can get the gist of it with the following essays. This page is a work in progress. There has long been a tradition of “received” poetry in English (& other languages) but critical to our poetics is the notion of: “getting rid of the lyrical interference of the individual as ego” as Charles Olson noted in Projective Verse. That Olson a few lines later in the essay alludes to humility is critical. Umeek, E. Richard Atleo of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribe also notes that humility is a necessary requirement in his people’s knowledge acquisition method known as Oosumich. CPL poetics values writing as vision quest and the Day Song exercise is one of the most effective approaches we have encountered to achieve that goal.
Workshop participants may find it helpful to be familiar with these essays:
A FEW DONT’S BY AN IMAGISTE (Ezra Pound)
THE POEM AS A FIELD OF ACTION – WCW circa UW 1948
SOME NOTES ON ORGANIC FORM by Denise Levertov
PROJECTIVE VERSE by Charles Olson
HUMAN UNIVERSE by Charles Olson
PERSONISM: A Manifesto by Frank O’Hara
INTRODUCTION TO THE WEDGE by William Carlos Williams
On the Function of the Line by Denise Levertov
THE OBFUSCATED POEM by Bernadette Mayer
THE PRACTICE OF OUTSIDE by Robin Blaser. (Also see my piece: Some Notes on the Practice of Outside.)
ON THELONIOUSISM by Wanda Coleman
Creativity and the Fully Developed Bard by Ed Sanders
Investigative Poetry by Ed Sanders
CREATIVE WRITING LIFE tips by Anne Waldman
OPPOSITIONAL POETICS by Anne Waldman
Joanne Kyger and “the Kook Strain” in Olson: A Reading by Patrick James Dunagan
Olson’s teaching was far more concerned with demonstrating a manner of existing than any of the other more conventional modes of learning.
“practice as a mode of intellection, not simply a means of creating what the intellect explains.”
“the poet must have a cosmology” going on to insist “The universe is your collaborator […] You start with the active growth process going on in the cosmos. Cosmology is a cooperative act.”
Writing or ReWriting by Paul E Nelson
Post Coyote Poetry by Andrew Schelling
Bernadette Mayer’s List of Journal Ideas
EcoPoetics Minifesto- A Draft for Angie – Brenda Hillman
Charles Olson and the Counterculture of the 1950s & 1960s (by Craig Stormont)
Mind Writing Slogans collected by Allen Ginsberg
The One Mind by Larry Dossey
Introduction to SPLAY ANTHEM by Nate Mackey