[Chatter]

Seth Abramson:

I don't think you can armchair this stuff, it takes year of dedicated toil on a thin slice of history to get it right, to chronicle what really happened and why, and what it means, and--I don't know--in light of that I think to myself, School of Quietude, seriously? I mean, seriously? Is that a joke? Quite apart from his abhorrence at the notion of "describing," I think Dorn would, were he around, urinate publicly on the sort of sloppy thinking that condenses decades of intricate happenings into a bumper sticker. Black Mountain School? I mean what the hell is that all about? Olson and Duncan and Creeley were totally different poets, with totally different personalities and artistic temperaments and aesthetic worldviews. So they were in the same space for a few years, so what? Olson probably spent as much time with Jung--reading his writings, I mean--as he did breaking bread with Creeley, and clearly one set of views "took" and the other less so, whatever their institutional affiliations were. The term Black Mountain School is an obscenity, developed for the ease and comfort of those who want bite-size nuggets of history fed to them--like trivia for a pub quiz--at regular intervals.

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