Allowing your human vision to linger upon the reality of these letters, these verses, these manifestos of script and tongue which have been elevated from our primordial grounds of expression to distinguish and shape the concrete, revitalize, from the inured base of our abstract metaphysics, that organic core entity from which language ought to, and originally did, project from.
Formally introduced in Charles Olson’s Projective Verse, ‘open field’ enables the human to extend from the confines of his ambiguous duality and transfer that which gives him humanity, through the words, into another human who recognizes the entity as something not dissimilar from his own. Using phenomenology as a base of perspective, composition by field acts as an extender of the instant, the moment, the ineffably laudable and perfect in unity fragment of existence, capturable, or in an attempt to be captured, within the aspiring unbounded structure of open field composition. Extending the content into the form, Olson avowed that it would attain an essence the exuded the integral, pivotal, and most concrete sensations that emanate from the body itself.
This radically innovative approach to writing verse could perhaps only have been spawned by the fragile entanglement of the artists, mentors, atmosphere, and essence of genuine collaboration that was at the heart of Black Mountain College. Although small and tucked away near woodlands in Asheville, North Carolina, short- lived Black Mountain College with its radically experimental approach to education gave comfort and shelter to a community of artists unlike any other institution or group. This reflects epically within the writing of the Black Mountain Poets. Although each are unique, particular, and phenomenally distinctive from one another in their methods of handling language and its surrounding form, they all carry the influential ability of transposing reality, in a lucidity that fails to find compare. They all, in some manner, were deeply conscious of their writing, and shared the value of maintaining a sense of honesty to themselves and to their 3rd party readers.
Such aspirations pierce deeply into my own ideas of language and its utilization for a genuine purpose. Often language is used to manipulate or divert its readers from a truth, using its inherent logic and rationale. In some cases its function is to describe, lifelessly painting abstract symbols in our minds that detract from the boundlessness that object and substance innately carry. What these poets, for me, do, is invigorate and give a pulse to the words that are sometimes left as corpses, grey and inanimate. They infuse into composition the natural kinetics and illustrate that “elements are to be seen as creating the tension of a poem as totally as do those other object create what we know as the world” (243). This action brings the purpose of language to illustrate and capture the immortality of the real. As humans inexorably propel themselves forward into the prospects of ‘evolution’, this poetry, so to speak, affirms the origins of our nature; giving it flesh so not to have it fade underneath a groundless construction that the ego and civilization has fabricated for itself. It brings into tangibility the fleeting and the moment to instant impressions and experiences of existence in life, much as Joyce’s works extend into the entity of reality, to extract it, and lure it into a, usually, articulate flow of syllables and images. Their poetry paints an awe-inspiring juxtaposition of life and verse; a unification of the breath and (perhaps the most profound foundation to man’s intellect) tangible tongue.(Olson)
Work Cited
Charles Olson, Donald Allen, and Benjamin Friedlander. Collected prose. Los Angelos: Univ of California Pr, 1997. 239-249. Print.
Benz, Jim. "Charles Olson's Essay on Projective Verse." Poetry- Forms.suite101.com. N.p., 05/02/2010. Web. 3 Jun 2010. essay-on-projective-verse>.
Fully Awake. Dir. Neeley House, Cathryn Davis." Independent: 2005, Film.
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