Atlantis, an Autoanthropology

Over the course of his long career, Nathaniel Tarn has been a poet, anthropologist, and book editor, while his travels have taken him into every continent. Born in France, raised in England, and earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he knew André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Margot Fonteyn, Charles Olson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and many more of the twentieth century’s major artists and intellectuals. In Atlantis, an Autoanthropology he writes that he has "never (yet) been able to experience the sensation of being only one person.” Throughout this literary memoir and autoethnography, Tarn captures this multiplicity and reaches for the uncertainties of a life lived in a dizzying array of times, cultures, and environments. Drawing on his practice as an anthropologist, he takes himself as a subject of study, examining the shape of a life devoted to the study of the whole of human culture. Atlantis, an Autoanthropology prompts us to consider our own multiple selves and the mysteries contained within.

Atlantis, an Autoanthropology

Over the course of his long career, Nathaniel Tarn has been a poet, anthropologist, and book editor, while his travels have taken him into every continent. Born in France, raised in England, and earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he knew André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Margot Fonteyn, Charles Olson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and many more of the twentieth century’s major artists and intellectuals. In Atlantis, an Autoanthropology he writes that he has "never (yet) been able to experience the sensation of being only one person.” Throughout this literary memoir and autoethnography, Tarn captures this multiplicity and reaches for the uncertainties of a life lived in a dizzying array of times, cultures, and environments. Drawing on his practice as an anthropologist, he takes himself as a subject of study, examining the shape of a life devoted to the study of the whole of human culture. Atlantis, an Autoanthropology prompts us to consider our own multiple selves and the mysteries contained within.

The aesthetics of participation.

"In this paper I would like to articulate a mode of perceptual participation, primarily an aesthetic mode, whereby humans enter into relation with the natural world around them. In order to elaborate on the mode of this participation I will draw examples from artists and thinkers that I believe have determined to make the notion of 'participation' an integral part of their work. The purpose of this paper is to situate my project in a larger tradition and theoretical framework. Over the last two years of study I have been drawn to a number of artists and thinkers who have influenced me a great deal. The common feature among them, or the relevant feature to me, has been the theme of the interaction between the self and the world, the organism and the environment, to use John Dewey's terminology, and how this interaction speaks of humanity's carnal and perceptual inherence in the world. Among these artists are Charles Olson, Jack Chambers and Stan Brakhage, and I would like to discuss their work in relation to this interactive process of self and world."--Pages 2-3.

The aesthetics of participation.

"In this paper I would like to articulate a mode of perceptual participation, primarily an aesthetic mode, whereby humans enter into relation with the natural world around them. In order to elaborate on the mode of this participation I will draw examples from artists and thinkers that I believe have determined to make the notion of 'participation' an integral part of their work. The purpose of this paper is to situate my project in a larger tradition and theoretical framework. Over the last two years of study I have been drawn to a number of artists and thinkers who have influenced me a great deal. The common feature among them, or the relevant feature to me, has been the theme of the interaction between the self and the world, the organism and the environment, to use John Dewey's terminology, and how this interaction speaks of humanity's carnal and perceptual inherence in the world. Among these artists are Charles Olson, Jack Chambers and Stan Brakhage, and I would like to discuss their work in relation to this interactive process of self and world."--Pages 2-3.

ECO-POETICS OF CHARLES OLSON: AN ECOCRITICAL STUDY ON “THE KINGFISHERS”

This paper interprets Charles Olson’s poem, “The Kingfishers” (1949) through ecocritical lenses. Although not counted necessarily as an environmentalist, ecopoet or nature writer, many of Olson’s works can be scrutinized within the frame of Ecocriticism, which as a literary theory and critical approach emerging in the Western academia by the 1990s, is mainly defined as the “study of the relationship between the literature and the physical environment” (Glotfelty and Fromm, eds., 1996: xviii). Progressing towards an eco-centric universe rather than anthropocentric in alternative ways that will help continue interaction among species and lead to organic sustainability, Ecocriticism both as a method and practice aims to revitalize the literary conception and representation of human and non-human universes. On the other hand, what triggers Olson’s ecopoetics has been parallel to some of the basic tenets of Ecocriticism: Olson’s works demonstrate his critique of the Western logocentric thinking that undermines, exploits and silences nature as the non-human other. Moreover, his acknowledgement of the primordial cultures of Americas as well as his preoccupation with the fauna and flora of his hometown, Gloucester-Massachusetts serves as an example of “bio-regionalism” in connection with the larger spectrum. Thus, this paper handles the poem “The Kingfishers” with an ecocritical approach in trying to exemplify the ecological awareness in Charles Olson. The entanglement between verse and universe interpreted within Ecocritical discourse will be discussed in terms of subtitles such as “poetry as dwelling,” “bio-regionalism” and “the concept of interconnectedness and theory of rhizome” all of which render service to the ecocritical emphasis on the “sustainability of literature.”

Hearing the Form: Breath and the Structures of Poetry in Charles Olson and Paul Celan

This essay examines the ways in which the American poet Charles Olson, and the German-speaking Romanian Jewish poet Paul Celan, each in relation to specific post-war cultural circumstances, experimented with new ways of structuring poetry in relation to the breath: Olson in response to new global scientific, political, and intellectual currents; Celan in response to the Holocaust. The essay discusses not only how the poets wrote but also how they realised the printed forms of their poetry in performance, contrasting Olson’s literal performance of his theories with the different relation of print to performance of his contemporary and associate William Carlos Williams. It argues that Olson’s experiments, polemically formulated in his manifesto Projective Verse, while they have influenced central currents of American poetry since the 1950s, have remained largely American, whereas Celan’s, tentatively intimated in his anti-manifesto Der Meridian, and inimitably personal in their specific forms, can also be seen as modelling ways in which a wide range of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry can be realised in reading aloud.

Lexicography and Modern Poetry

‘Lexicography and Modern Poetry’ provides an overview of the various uses that poets have made of dictionaries since the 1960s. Works by a number of poets from Britain and the United States are discussed, chiefly W. H. Auden, J. H. Prynne, and R. F. Langley, but also Charles Olson, Robert Hass, and Harryette Mullen, among others. Following its early acknowledgement of Michael Davidson’s recognition of the ‘lexical insert’, the essay draws a number of connections between Auden, Prynne, and Langley, before the final section collates a range of examples that illustrate a number of the ways in which poets have attempted to challenge the authority of the dictionary.

Renaissance of the Archaic

The wartime scene in New York continues with Finnegans Wake once again setting a precedent, this time for the Abstract Expressionists. It was a moment when they—like the European exiles among them—were exploring the indigenous art of the Americas and the unfathomable scope of the archaic revealed by successive discoveries in Europe of Paleolithic caves, from Altamira to Lascaux. They—along with the European exiles—found these discoveries existentially chastening, inspiring the insistence of poet Charles Olson on the “post-modern” urgency of a post-humanist outlook, recoverable in prehistory. As figuration receded from art, the aura of the symbol was invested in the titles of paintings, which were abuzz with terms like “night” and “archaic.” But a palpable symbol did emerge, not as artifice but as semiotic index in the form of the human hand.