Dec 29, 2009

As the Dead Prey upon Us | As the Dead Prey upon Us

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...

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As the Dead Prey upon Us | As the Dead Prey upon Us

At a glance:

The Poem

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