Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "Egotism: A Meditation Penciled on the Back Fly Leaf of Tom Clark's Biography of Charles Olson," Joseph Duemer offers a sharp, intimate, and critical reflection on Olson's character, his flaws, and his legacy as a poet and man. The poem unfolds as a layered examination of Olson's “self-regard,” comparing his boundless energy and self-assurance to a smoldering arrogance that blinds him to the lives affected by his intensity. Duemer’s meditation becomes an exploration not only of Olson but of Duemer’s own reflections on self-centeredness, familial wounds, and mortality.

From the outset, Duemer is blunt in his assessment, “The only thing I admire about Charles Olson is his energy,” setting up a relationship with Olson that feels both grudging and respectful. Yet he quickly tempers this praise with a scathing observation: Olson’s energy, though prodigious, stems from an insular self-regard. Duemer places Olson in the tradition of prophetic figures like William Blake and the “major arcana of the Old Testament.” Olson, like Blake, perceives himself as “keyed into a vision of truth about the world,” a claim to prophetic wisdom. Yet while Blake’s visions are transcendent, reaching into a symbolic universe that suggests divine truths, Duemer argues Olson’s insights fail to transcend his own self-involvement. His prophetic stance, Duemer suggests, is self-serving rather than self-emptying.

The speaker then turns to the concept of “vision,” asserting that genuine vision lies not in standing “outside the world” in self-righteous detachment, but in being “more perfectly inside” it. This distinction reframes Olson’s poetic claims of universal insight as solipsistic rather than insightful. Duemer offers his own metaphor of groundedness: he is “ready to cross the river,” yet finds himself ill-prepared, “wearing wingtips, as if ready for a dance in the seventh grade.” This scene, tinged with irony and nostalgia, contrasts the groundedness Duemer advocates with Olson’s perceived failure to plant his feet in anything beyond his own ego. Here, Duemer recalls his own father, a figure of “coarse” self-interest, who forces him to confront the painful similarities between Olson’s self-centeredness and his father’s.

This personal comparison extends into a critical examination of Olson’s personal life, particularly his treatment of those close to him. Duemer highlights Olson’s propensity to “wear out & discard” wives and friends and the poet’s apparent failure to recognize the destructive path he leaves in his wake. Olson’s yearning for self-knowledge, Duemer argues, is undercut by his failure to perceive the pain he inflicts on others. This juxtaposition exposes a deeply tragic flaw: for all Olson’s intellectual and artistic aspirations, he ultimately elevates himself above the realities and needs of others, unable to reconcile his professed ideals with his actions.

Duemer’s personal grief deepens this critique. As he reflects on Olson’s neglect of family, his bitterness finds its counterpart in the figure of Duemer’s own father, a man lacking compassion for anyone but himself. The portrayal of Olson becomes, in part, a vehicle for understanding the speaker’s unresolved anger toward his father. The poem thus weaves Olson’s story with the speaker’s own personal anguish, revealing how the poet’s disappointment in Olson is rooted not just in artistic standards but in deeply personal wounds.

By invoking figures like John Cage and Franz Kline, Duemer highlights the contrast between Olson’s egocentric vision and the work of other artists who understood the world “beyond the edge of [their] skin.” For Duemer, Olson’s poetry, despite its ambitions, lacks an essential selflessness, a humility and discipline that Cage and Kline seem to embody. Olson is described as an “idiot savant,” a poet who can perform remarkable feats of expression but whose work, ultimately, “simply folds Wordsworth & Melville into Ezra Pound.” This comment suggests a shallowness in Olson’s work—a failure to transform his influences into something that authentically reflects the world outside himself.

The setting Duemer describes as he reads—an evening framed by natural sounds and glimpses of his own family—provides a foil to Olson’s inward gaze. Duemer’s moment of connection to nature, and his “strong as a goddess” wife emerging from the river, offers a moment of clarity. In seeing her, he recognizes the mythic dimension of desire and myth, yet he is also wary of the “danger of churning everything into the vortex” of the self. This moment suggests that Duemer’s critique of Olson is also a warning to himself, a meditation on the risks of allowing one’s personal narrative to overwhelm one’s understanding of the world.

The poem’s conclusion combines reverence and censure in a complex blessing for Olson, recognizing the “terror” of his angels, the furious creative drive that animated him, even if it left others in turmoil. Duemer’s “Amen” is layered with irony and admiration, acknowledging the destructive and redemptive powers within Olson’s work and life. For all his frustrations with Olson, Duemer ultimately grants him a measure of respect, recognizing that Olson, in his own way, “worked like a madman” in service to a vision, however flawed.

In "Egotism: A Meditation," Duemer renders a multi-dimensional portrait of Olson that is both a critique and a self-reflection. By juxtaposing his disappointment in Olson with his own memories of his father and his recognition of his own inner conflicts, Duemer offers a poignant meditation on the dangers of ego, the complexities of artistic ambition, and the longing for connection and understanding that transcends the self.

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