People like Charles Olson

Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Consequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of the language school, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure. He described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as "an archeologist of morning."

Olson was born to Karl Joseph and Mary (Hines) Olson and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his father worked as a mail carrier. He spent summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which was to become his adopted hometown and the focus of his writing. At high school he was a champion orator, winning a tour of Europe (including a meeting with William Butler Yeats) as a prize. He studied English literature at Wesleyan University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1932 before earning an M.A. in the discipline (with a thesis on the oeuvre of Herman Melville) in 1933. After completing his M.A., Olson continued his Melville research at Wesleyan during the 1933-1934 academic year with partial fellowship support. For two years thereafter, he taught English as an instructor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.