David Herd is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent

Introduction: Contemporary Olson - David Herd

Section I: Knowledge
1. Myth and document in Charles Olson's Maximus Poems - Miriam Nichols
2. Discoverable unknowns: Olson's lifelong preoccupation with the sciences - Peter Middleton
3. 'Empty Air': Charles Olson's cosmology - Reitha Pattison
4. A reading of 'In Cold Hell, In Thicket' - Ian Brinton and Michael Grant

Section II: Poetics
5. From Olson's breath to Spicer's gait: spacing, pacing, phonemes - Daniel Katz
6. Poetic instruction - Michael Kindellan
7. Reading Blackburn reading Olson: Paul Blackburn reads Olson's 'Maximus, to Gloucester: Letter 15' - Simon Smith
8. From Weymouth back: Olson's British contacts, travels and legacy - Gavin Selerie
9. A fresh look at Olson - Elaine Feinstein

Section III: Gender
10. Olson and his Maximus Poems - Rachel Blau DuPlessis
11. 'When the attentions change': Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff - Robert Hampson
12. 'The pictorial handwriting of his dreams': Charles Olson, Susan Howe, Redell Olsen - Will Montgomery

Section IV: History
13. The contemporaries: a reading of Charles Olson's 'The Lordly and Isolate Satyrs' - Stephen Fredman
14. Futtocks - Anthony Mellors
15. Death in life: the past in 'As the Dead Prey Upon Us' - Ben Hickman
16. 'To Gerhardt, There, Among Europe's Things of Which He Has Written Us in His "Brief an Creeley und Olson''': Olson on history, in dialogue - Sarah Posman
17. 'Moving among my particulars': the 'negative dialectics' of The Maximus Poems - Tim Woods
18. A note on Charles Olson's 'The Kingfishers' - Charles Bernstein

Section V: Space
19. Transcultural projectivism in Charles Olson's 'The Kingfishers' and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri's Warlugulong - Peter Minter
20. The view from Gloucester: Open Field Poetics and the politics of movement - David Herd
21. Why Olson did ballet: the pedagogical avant-gardism of Massine - Karlien van den Beukel
22. On the back of the elephant: riding with Charles Olson - Iain Sinclair

Epilogue: Charles Olson's first poem - Ralph Maud

Bibliography
Index