Charles Olson changes objects: a reinterpretation of projective verse

Abstract

This article argues that what Charles Olson called objectism was not the mere rehashing of objectivist poetics, as has sometimes been supposed, but involved the working out of a position that was diametrically opposed to objectivism, with respect both to objects in the world and objects in the poem. Central to objectism was what I call here the rule of interchangeability. It is this principle of interchangeability, I argue, that both grounds poetry’s open form and frees up its dynamic relational energy. In the second half of the essay, I consider how these findings bear upon the poetry through a detailed close reading of some of the earlier Maximus poems.