Robin Blaser reads his paper, "The Violets: Charles Olson and ' Alfred North Whitehead (a cosmological reading of a cosmology)" Note: A version of this essay can be found in the journal Line, number two, fall 1983 Blaser introduces "The Violets"; the translation of Whitehead into poetry Preface to the paper: a "collage" of quotations Quotation from John RusseVs The Meanings of Modern Art . (... Show moreRobin Blaser reads his paper, "The Violets: Charles Olson and ' Alfred North Whitehead (a cosmological reading of a cosmology)" Note: A version of this essay can be found in the journal Line, number two, fall 1983 Blaser introduces "The Violets"; the translation of Whitehead into poetry Preface to the paper: a "collage" of quotations Quotation from John RusseVs The Meanings of Modern Art . ("Art is there to make sense of the World...") 7 Quotation from Philip Rief.f from Triumph of the Therapeutic Blaser reads an entry from his journal Reads W.C. Williams' "St. Francis Einstein of the Daffodils" The specialized meanings of some terms used by Whitehead: "prehension", "subjective aim", "actual entities", "eternal object", "feeling", "God" Begins to read "The Violets" "The American poet who has made the most profound use of Whitehead's thought is Charles Olson..." (Lines, p.61) "The reality of Marxism remains, as it began, The other face of Hegel..." (p.62) "What I have noticed in the poetry and poetics of the most important poets is that they are arguing, weaving, and composing a cosmology and an epistemological practice" (p.63) "I have arranged my essay to include copious quotation" (p.64) "In a letter of 1916, before the essay was printed in 1919, Pound states his interest" (p.65) "This wonderful voice, guiding science and, as we shall see, entering into poetry, draws attention to what is mostv to be attended to in art..." "Among Olson's books, now collected in The Charles Olson Archives..." (p.67) "This lecture was "preceded and followed" by study sessions on Process and Reality" (p.68) "This well-judged summary brings us a long way into a sense of Olson's response to the philosopher..." (p.69) "A fresh world-view, their indebted to science by way of Einstein and Whitehead..." (p.70) Side one ends in the middle of a quotation from W.C. Williams "Paul Christensen describes the look and feel of the poems in just such terms..." (p.70) . "Olson's direct use of Whitehead's thought by way of reference, borrowing, and quotation can be traced to Process and Reality and to Adventures in Ideas" (p.71) "This move away from a systematic relationship to Whitehead's ' philosophy of organism should be noted..." (p.72) "This lecture is marked by its introductory character from the initial statement on coming to know Whitehead's thought..." (p.73) "From the passages quoted by Olson, Whitehead turns to a further consideration of the 'second stage of feeling'..." (p.74) "It is at such.a point as this that we may begin to understand' what I have called Olson's translation of Whitehead" (p.75) "Olson consistently translates Whitehead's philosophy-of organism and its magnificent 'vision' of process back into his own acts as a poet of perception and intelligence" (p.76) "Olson terms the condition a 'return to object1 and he returns art to the 'contest'" (p.77) "The sudden appearance of 'one's self in this context may seem abrupt." (p.78) "With many a quotation, I have endeavoured to dramatize the two languages of these men..." (p.79) "Two epigraphs open the argument..." (p.80) "Olson is proposing to date the loss of the sense of reality as a process at that point" (p.81) "Olson draws a line from the underlined word 'multiplicity' to the bottom of the page..." (p.82) "This 'WILL' includes an obedience within the process..."^(p.83) "Interpretation, with its lingering positivism and its confused urge towards materialism, too often ignores the fundamental religious temper of poetic thought" (p.85). "This is an important moment of preparation in von Hallberg's • argument..." (p.86) "From the underlined word 'objects', Olson draws a line to the bottom of the page..." (p.87) - side two ends here Show less