Concerning Exaggeration, or How, Properly, to Heap Up (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Charles Olson
- First Published: 1953
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Mythology or myths, Poetry or poets, Dreams, Gods or goddesses, Heroes or heroism, Life, philosophy of, Blood
The Poem
“Concerning Exaggeration, or How, Properly, to Heap Up” is a long poem of one hundred lines describing the ideal poet and the fully realized human being, both of whom reject conventional limitations for identification with the totality of reality through exaggeration (literally, from the Latin root, “to heap up”), requiring a movement of the self into a reimagined world of fulfilling possibilities.
Written in 1951, the poem first appeared in In Cold Hell, in Thicket, edited by a poetic disciple, Robert Creeley, in 1953. The volume was the only...
[The entire page is 1415 words long]
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