About the Author

Richard Blevins holds degrees from Kent State University, the University of Oregon, and the University of Pittsburgh, where he has taught literature and poetry writing. In addition to his scholarly writing and editing, he has published books of poetry and many essays.

Charles Olson was one of the most innovative poets of the 20th century. As a teacher at the Black Mountain College, he was one of the three most influential members of the Black Mountain movement, along with Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley. "Creeley and I have since engaged in perhaps the most important correspondence of my life,” Olson told a friend in 1950. Creeley, in his turn, found Olson's letters "of such energy and calculation that they constituted a practical 'college' of stimulus and information.”

Robert Creeley was a major American poet, essayist, and editor. He first met Charles Olson at Black Mountain College where, Creeley joked, Olson was referred to as "Maximus" and he was called "Minimus" due to their teacher-apprentice relationship. A close friendship followed, documented in the ten-volume collected correspondence. Creely wrote, "The letters...were really my education just because their range and articulation took me into terms of writing and many other areas indeed where I otherwise might never have entered."