John Olson

John Olson is the author of numerous books of poetry and (chiefly) prose poetry, including Dada Budapest, Larynx Galaxy, and Backscatter: New and Selected Poems. He is also the author of four novels, including In Advance of the Broken Justy, The Seeing Machine, The Nothing That Is, and Souls of Wind.

By this author

Elsewhere is here

John Olson reviews 'Everwhat,' poems by Clayton Eshleman

Reflections on a Paper Mirror

'The Beginning Of Sorrows'

John Olson with Noah Eli Gordon

A romantic In denim

Inner light

Recently in Jacket2

Near/Miss launches

Charles Bernstein

New from University of Chicago Press: paper, cloth, e-book
Audible.com has also published an audiobook of my reading of the full work.

Metabolic pathways

Poetry and permeability

Adam Dickinson

Test tube filled with blood — A sample of my blood. Photo credit: Jimmy Limit.

Oil is a form of writing. I know this because I can read it in my blood, urine, and shit. As part of research for a recent book, I tested myself for a wide range of chemicals. I also had my microbiome sequenced. I found petrochemical pollution in my blood and urine in the form of pesticides, flame retardants, phthalates, and more. I discovered evidence in my gut of shifted microbial communities associated with aspects of the Western diet. I wrote about what I found in a book called Anatomic, which I will discuss in more detail in the next post.

Peter Valente

Introduction and translation of Nerval's essay 'Le Diable Rouge'

Jerome Rothenberg

[With the help of Henri Delaage (a well-known figure in the nineteenth century among the “initiated” in Paris) and some illustrators (including the famous Nadar, who was a designer before becoming a photographer), Gerard de Nerval composed the journal Le Diable Rouge, which was meant to be a “Cabalistic Almanac for 1850.” Le Diable Rouge inaugurated Nerval’s “Republican” period, the one that would see him, in 1850, publishing in Le National, the great daily organ of the Left.