As the Dead Prey upon Us (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Charles Olson
- First Published: 1957
- Type of Work: Elegy
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry, Elegy
- Subjects: Memory, Mothers, Parents and children, Ghosts or apparitions, Dreams, Death or dying, Creative process, Deer, Animals
The Poem
As with other poems Charles Olson wrote in the 1950’s, “As the Dead Prey Upon Us” is composed in open form using a variety of stanza patterns, from long strophelike paragraphs to short, lumpy passages dense with imagery. Olson’s “Projective Verse” essay, published in 1950, sets forth his strategies for writing poetry, which include the use of the typewriter as an instrument for designing how a poem is to be read as well as for picturing the precise patterns in which a poet’s ideas form and fuse together into lyric language. Thus, a “projective” poem...
[The entire page is 1923 words long]
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