Thorpe, John

Matter (A Curriculum of the Soul No. 25)

Canton, NY: Institute for Further Studies, 1975. First Printing. Stapled Wrappers. “I’m looking for a house to live in. Just a 1 bedroom house. We’re expecting a baby 4 months from now, and we had to leave the place we were. It’s a low muggy day. I’m not sure where anything is here. I watched the fisherman cut a marlin. A man with a nice face in shorts was splitting sections of bamboo and in back of him, the frame of a house made of branches & rope. I climbed up in the hills back of the roads. A japanese family was up there walking along the rocks. Dusty chicken raisers & backward mechanics settled up here with leaves & branch peelings & the rock, concrete, junked things. Outside of the depots, all is water, and heat, and dust, ants & mosquitoes. No salt. No sugar. Maybe some homemade vinegar, some dried tobacco. No kerosene. No yeast. My neck & arms burn. I take a seat on lava rock. It’s not that this is where I’d want to stay. There is no pleasure but the physical one of being here. I wipe the sweat down. Otherwise this is to report no luck. This is to report I know nobody. It’s okay…”--John Thorp, “Matter.” This issue (or “fascicle”), titled Matter, is the 25th in the series. Olson’s experimental poetic form and execution mobilized countless poets to utilize his new form (Projective Verse) and play within this new experimental framework. As a result, the famous A Curriculum of the Soul series came into being. Put out by the Institute of Further Studies–founded by Albert Glover (b. 1942), poet and foremost authority on Olson; John “Jack” Clarke, Blake Scholar, poet and jazz musician; Vancouver poet Fred Wah (b. 1939); and George Butterick (1942-1988), Olson scholar, poet, and librarian—A Curriculum for the Soul was a series of 28 chapbooks that highlighted a term as a “subject” and tasked a given poet with writing a “fascicle” about it. This offering comes directly from the collection of Albert Glover (b. 1942), the great American scholar, bibliographer, author & publisher who is the foremost living authority on literary (& literal) Giant Charles Olson (our favorite Maximus Obscurantist). John Thorpe’s offering to the Olsonian bible that is Curriculum of the Soul, Matter is a work of poetic experimentation, “open-verse” inspired phrasings, and prosaic wanderings that spiral and contract around the twin pillars of the abstract and the concrete. In his evocation of Olson, Thorpe’s voice comes out as a borderline manic rhapsody of image and subject, where the physical and the metaphysical come together in a bizarre yet endlessly compelling amalgamation of poetics. An incredibly rare and strikingly experimental work, A Curriculum of the Soul: Matter is a monumental poetic work, and perhaps of the most evocative works based on the poetics of Olson. Chapbook in stapled wrappers. First Printing. In very fine condition with only the slightest wear to fine edges and minor wear/smudging to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #8119]

Price: $150.00