Covering the fundamentals of stochastic processes, this title includes the basics of Poisson processes, Markov chains, branching processes, martingales, and diffusion processes. It presents a unique blend of theory and applications, with special emphasis on mathematical modelling, computational techniques and examples from the biological sciences. It is appropriate for students in applied mathematics, biostatistics, computational biology, computer science, physics, and statistics.
First published in 1947, this acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences—especially Shakespearean ones—on Melville’s writing of Moby-Dick. One of the first Melvilleans to advance what has since become known as the “theory of the two Moby-Dicks,” Olson argues that there were two versions of Moby-Dick, and that Melville’s reading King Lear for the first time in between the first and second versions of the book had a profound impact on his conception of the saga: “the first book did not contain Ahab,” writes Olson, and “it may not, except incidentally, have contained Moby-Dick.” If literary critics and reviewers at the time responded with varying degrees of skepticism to the “theory of the two Moby-Dicks,” it was the experimental style and organization of the book that generated the most controversy. Passionate in his poetry, Olson was no less passionate in his reading of Melville. Impatient with what he regarded as traditional forms of literary criticism, Olson engaged his own creativity to write a book as robust, original, and compelling as Melville’s masterpiece. “Not only important, but apocalyptic.”—New York Herald Tribune “One of the most stimulating essays ever written on Moby-Dick, and for that matter on any piece of literature, and the forces behind it.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Olson has been a tireless student of Melville and every Melville lover owes him a debt for his Scotland Yard pertinacity in getting on the trail of Melville’s dispersed library.”—Lewis Mumford, New York Times “Records, often brilliantly, one way of taking the most extraordinary of American books.”—W. E. Bezanson, New England Quarterly “The most important contribution to Melville criticism since Raymond Weaver’s pioneering contribution in 1921.”—George Mayberry, New Republic
The Maximus Poems is one of the high achievements of twentieth-century American letters and an essential poem in the postmodern canon. It stands out, in Hayden Carruth's words, as "a huge and truly angelic effort," matching the dimensions of its hero's name and returning poetry to its Homeric and Hesiodic scope. This complete edition of The Maximus Poems brings together the three volumes of Charles Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968, and 1975, and long out of print) in an authoritative version edited according to the highest standards of textual criticism. Errors in the previous editions have been corrected, twenty-nine new poems added, and the sequence of the final poems modified in the light of the editor's research among the poet's papers. --University of California Press.
For Charles Olson, letters were not only a daily means of communication with friends but were at the same time a vehicle for exploratory thought. In fact, many of Olson's finest works, including Projective Verse and the Maximus Poems, were formulated as letters. Olson's letters are important to an understanding of his definition of the postmodern, and through the play of mind exhibited here we recognize him as one of the vital thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume, edited and annotated by Ralph Maud, we see Olson at the height of his powers and also at his most human. Nearly 200 letters, selected from a known 3,000, demonstrate the wide range of Olson's interests and the depth of his concern for the future. Maud includes letters to friends and loved ones, job and grant applications, letters of recommendation, and Black Mountain College business letters, as well as correspondence illuminating Olson's poetics. As we read through the letters, which span the years from 1931, when Olson was an undergraduate, to his death in 1970, a fascinating portrait of this complex poet and thinker emerges.
"I have assumed a great deal in the selection of the poems from such a large and various number, making them a discourse unavoidably my own as well as any Olson himself might have chosen to offer. I had finally no advice but the long held habit of our using one another, during his life, to act as a measure, a bearing, an unabashed response to what either might write or say."—Robert Creeley A seminal figure in post-World War II literature, Charles Olson has helped define the postmodern sensibility. His poetry embraces themes of empowering love, political responsibility, the wisdom of dreams, the intellect as a unit of energy, the restoration of the archaic, and the transformation of consciousness—all carried in a voice both intimate and grand, American and timeless, impassioned and coolly demanding. In this selection of some 70 poems, Robert Creeley has sought to present a personal reading of Charles Olson's decisive and inimitable work—"unequivocal instances of his genius"—over the many years of their friendship.
Maud (English, Simon Fraser U.) offers a narrative account of the life and work of poet Charles Olson, focusing on the poet's lifelong reading material as a basis for understanding his work. Drawing on an annotated listing of his library, as well as his childhood books and poetry by his contemporaries, he links the books to the poet's intellectual and poetic development at each stage of his career. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The prose writings of Charles Olson (1910–1970) have had a far-reaching and continuing impact on post-World War II American poetics. Olson's theories, which made explicit the principles of his own poetics and those of the Black Mountain poets, were instrumental in defining the sense of the postmodern in poetry and form the basis of most postwar free verse. The Collected Prose brings together in one volume the works published for the most part between 1946 and 1969, many of which are now out of print. A valuable companion to editions of Olson's poetry, the book backgrounds the poetics, preoccupations, and fascinations that underpin his great poems. Included are Call Me Ishmael, a classic of American literary criticism; the influential essays "Projective Verse" and "Human Universe"; and essays, book reviews, and Olson's notes on his studies. In these pieces one can trace the development of his new science of man, called "muthologos," a radical mix of myth and phenomenology that Olson offered in opposition to the mechanistic discourse and rationalizing policy he associated with America's recent wars in Europe and Asia. Editors Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander offer helpful annotations throughout, and poet Robert Creeley, who enjoyed a long and mutually influential relationship with Olson, provides the book's introduction.
An incandescent biography of the inventor of "projective" verse, this comprehensive portrait distinguishes the convivial, bluff public figure from the tormented inner man. A lapsed Catholic, Olson (1910-1970) turned to Sumerian myths, Mayan legends and Islamic mysticism for cosmic insights that would inform poems of cyclic sweep. Torn by contradictory feelings toward his proud, stern father—a Swedish immigrant postman in Worcester, Mass.—the poet found a father-figure in mentor Edward Dahlberg and later in Ezra Pound. Reclusive self-absorption sapped his two common law marriages; he harbored enormous guilt over his neglect of his two children and over second wife Betty Kaiser's death (in a car accident), which may have been self-inflicted during a severe depression. Clark, author of books on Kerouac, Celine and Ted Berrigan, reveals that Olson grappled with homosexual impulses, took hallucinogens and dominated those around him, seeking periodic release from inner demons in frenzied floods of images.
Annotation "Through a detailed and thoughtful study of the impact of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy on Olson's aesthetic theory, this book points out the conceptual unity underlying what seems to be a sprawl of fragments in Olson's major work, The Maximus Poems." "On the one hand, concrete poetic units of The Maximus Poems serve as a starting point for clarifying how different elements are joined together in one unity. On the other hand, the book traces the blending of the whole poem at the macro level, following its course through a temporal progress in which the poem moves from one poetic unit to the next; that is, from a unity (of multiplicity) to a new unity (in which the previous unity is already part of the multiplicity building the new one). Thus the book illuminates Olson's theory of the Long Poem as an "all-containing" corpus, governed by metaphysical principles, equal to life itself, enacted in the process of working on The Maximus Poems."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
00 Praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors, Charles Olson (1910-1970) was declared by William Carlos Williams to be "a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me." This complete edition brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968, and 1975) in an authoritative version. Praised by his contemporaries and emulated by his successors, Charles Olson (1910-1970) was declared by William Carlos Williams to be "a major poet with a sweep of understanding of the world, a feeling for other men that staggers me." This complete edition brings together the three volumes of Olson's long poem (originally published in 1960, 1968, and 1975) in an authoritative version.
