Ann Charters

Ann Charters will be talking about how Charles Olson influenced her a young writer.  She met him in 1968, after she had spent the years 1963-65 in the graduate English program at Columbia.  Her dissertation was about 19th century writers in the Berkshires, with chapters on Melville and Hawthorne.  When she began to read Olson she was struck by his poem “Letter for Melville 1951.”  She will discuss this poem and then read her piece “Melville in the Berkshires,” her response to Olson’s poem.  Olson’s example taught her to respond to a creative act with another creative act.  Olson’s advice has guided her writing since she met him.

Among other books, Ann Charters has written and edited two books about and by Charles Olson in the 1960s, compiled a bibliography of Jack Kerouac and wrote his first biography (1973), and edited ten editions of the college textbook THE STORY AND ITS WRITER (1985-2019).