Description

Poet and author Charles Stein will give this year’s annual Charles Olson Lecture, presented in partnership with the Gloucester Writers Center. Stein is the author of thirteen books of poetry including Views From Tornado Island (forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil), a new verse translation of The Odyssey (North Atlantic Books), From Mimir’s Head (Station Hill Press), and The Hat Rack Tree (Station Hill Pres). His prose writings include a vision of the Eleusinian Mysteries, Persephone Unveiled (North Atlantic Books), a critical study of poet Charles Olson’s use of the writing of C.G. Jung, The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum (Station Hill Press), and a collaborative study with George Quasha of the work of Gary Hill, An Art of Limina: Gary Hill's Works & Writings, Ediciones Poligrafa.

The Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum is Stein’s major work on Charles Olson. The book explores Charles Olson’s visionary poetics and the extensive use he made of the writings of Jung. Offering numerous readings of poems from the “Maximus” series, Stein provides a useful and clearly written introduction to the major themes, cosmological speculations, and poetic inventions of Olson’s work. Using the poet’s notes and marginalia, Stein reveals complex interrelationships of language, geography, and the human body, leading to The Maximus Poems as an archetypal vision of the self.

Stein currently teaches a course in the MFA Writing on The Arts program of The School of Visual Arts in New York. He holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Connecticut at Storrs.