Charles Olson

“What does not change / is the will to change.”

“I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties.”

“Space is the central fact to man born in America.”

“There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only / eyes in all heads, / to be looked out of.”

“Art is the only twin life has.”

“Form is never more than an extension of content.”

“The local is the only universal, upon that all art builds.”

“The artist's struggle is to continually free himself from the cultural prison of his time.”

“Of rhythm is image, of image is knowing, of knowing there is a construct.”

“The only object is a man, carved out of himself, so wrought he fills his given space, makes inside room for himself and others.”

“Love is not easy but it is casual.”

“A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it... all the way over to the reader.”

“A poem must be a high-energy construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge.”

“We do what we know before we know what we do.”