Essay: Towards a Theory of Time in Olson

http://jacketmagazine.com/35/olson-by-pritts.shtml

Towards a Theory of Time in Olson by Nathan Pritts

Charles Olson Centennial Conference

Curriculum of the Soul

Charles Olson Centennial Conference

4 - 6 June 2010

Simon Fraser University, Vancouver

The call for papers will go out about a year from now. The conference will combine scholarly papers with poetry readings, a display of materials in Special Collections at SFU, and other events.

Paul Delany, Professor Emeritus
Department of English, Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive, Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
Tel: 604 264 1113

olson2010-1@sfu.ca

Vincent Ferrini, 1913-2007

Vincent Ferrini has died. His nephew, the filmmaker Henry Ferrini, sent me the following obit, which he wrote himself:

Vincent Ferrini died December 24th. His death was the result of a recent heart attack and bout with pneumonia. He resided at Den Mar Nursing home in Rockport since last May after returning from his latest reading at Beyond Baroque Literary Art Center in Los Angeles. He was 94 years old. For anyone who knew Mr. Ferrini his passion and engagement for the art of living will always be remembered.

If the poet were writing this obit he would say he did not die but rather merged into the pleroma. The pleroma was a word on his mind during the last few years. In Greek it means, "fullness.” The early Christian Gnostics saw it as the dwelling place of spirit and to scores of people in his community Vincent was the spirit & conscience of Gloucester.

Venanzio Ugo Ferrini was born in Saugus, Massachusetts on June 24, 1913 to John and Rena Ferrini. His parents emigrated separately from Abruzzi, Italy to work in the shoe factories of Lynn. Vincent’s own experience in the shoe factories and during the Great Depression instilled a great sensitivity for the life of the working poor.

In high school he found that books contained the keys to discovery and it was then that he resolved to become a writer. Ignoring his father’s admonition that a son of a shoe worker could never become a poet, he graduated from Lynn Classical and not having the money for college, pursued his education in the Lynn Public Library spending each day reading, studying, looking for answers to illuminate why humanity settled for poverty and war. When the Great Depression hit, the young bard worked as a teacher in the WPA as he worked his first volume of verse about the people of Lynn. In 1940 at the age of twenty-seven he published “No Smoke.”

A simple poem by the poet tells a great deal about the man.

Folk Song.

I pass
by day
and by night
no one has
seen me

If you ever
want to find
me and know me
leave behind
yourself
and enter
the caves
of other
people.

There you
will find
me
who is
yourself.

Mr. Ferrini married Margaret Duffy a schoolteacher in 1942. The couple had three children Sheila, Owen and Deirdre. In 1948 his young family left Lynn for Gloucester. Working at the GE by day, he soon gave up the security of a weekly paycheck to make a living as a frame maker. As he said in his 1975 autobiography, Hermit of the Clouds, being an independent craftsperson provided “the freedom to write when the poem is hot within.”

Mr. Ferrini’s move to Gloucester marked a shift in his poetry from the political and social to the personal and cosmic. Gloucester became a dream place that he made his place. Here his poetry and his life would find no separation.

In the late 40’s after reading a Ferrini poem in a small magazine the poet Charles Olson paid the poet a fan call. Olson first addressed the Maximus Poems as letters to Mr. Ferrini and even after an excoriating attack; the two men remained lifelong friends.

In the sixties after the death of his daughter Deirdre from leukemia, Ferrini’s marriage ended. He later married the artist Mary Shore. When his second marriage ended in divorce he moved back to his frame shop at 126 East Main Street. The little shop became a nexus for many artists and writers who came to Gloucester.

Vincent’s view of the individual, the family, the community and the nation working together for the common good compelled him to write not only to the Gloucester paper but the Globe, the New York Times and the Nation. At city hall he voiced his concerns at hundreds of council meetings. His focus was always the preservation of his city from the wildfire greed that will destroy the spirit and originality of his city.

Overcoming all odds Mr. Ferrini chose life as a poet. He was an academic outsider who lived with no financial remuneration from his labor. His vigor, unbound creativity and compassion kept him publishing for over 67 years producing 31 volumes of poetry, four volumes of plays and an autobiography. He is the subject of his nephew Henry Ferrini’s film, “Poem in Action.”

Mr. Ferrini leaves his daughter Shelia Ferrini of Boston, his son Owen Ferrini from Gloucester, two grandchildren, Ben and Cara Ferrini and dozens of extended family and friends whom he will continue to inspire. His younger siblings Yolanda, Dante and Lindo predeceased him.

A celebration of Vincent Ferrini’s life will be held at a forthcoming date. His upcoming book of poetry “Invisible Skin” is slated for release in the spring of 2008. Literary requests can be sent to Sheilaferrini@aol.com

--Henry Ferrini

You can also read the Gloucester Times obit here:
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/punews/local_story_361000712.html

New Olson Title from Stanford U Press

Beyond Maximus
The Construction of Public Voice in Black Mountain Poetry
Anne Day Dewey

Beyond Maximus: The Construction of Public Voice in Black Mountain Poetry is the only study of Black Mountain poets—Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, and Ed Dorn—to explain their association from the 1950s to their break-up after the Vietnam War.

Dewey uses the poets’ correspondence and other archival materials to illuminate their mutual influence and the crucial significance of “field poetics” to their careers. While previous criticism has focused on the poetics of the force field as a model of nature, Dewey understands the force field as a model of social force that all five poets articulate and incorporate into poetry in ways that compete with artistic craft. Their different conceptions of social force explain their divergent careers. The development of “field poetics” also sheds light on these poets’ attempts to create an alliance between experimental poetics and public voice, a difficult agenda that speaks to Black Mountain poetry’s crucial contribution to the artistic and political struggles of New American poetry.


“Beyond Maximus is the most perceptive and informative analysis to date of the poets conventionally grouped under the label ‘Black Mountain.’ Virtually every page of the book opens up fresh and exciting ways of looking both at the works of these poets as individuals and at the relationships among the poets. We have here a book that makes a vitally important contribution to the critical study of twentieth-century American poetry.”
—Burton Hatlen, University of Maine


Learn more...

Cloth ISBN: 08047-5647-3 $60.00

New on the Documents Page

Peter Bearse discusses Henry Ferrini's Film in an essay on the documents page.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/olson/blog/