1) I Compare the Small Town to a Prairie

For so many years, I've been looking
for a great prairie through which clean streams run
Its ever more ample verge
like a morning
easily stretches out its neck into night
Its people of plenty, namely the luxuriant grass
produce solid fruits crop after crop
There're wild fires, spring winds, and I
am nothing but a nameable horse
who needs a carriage, a grateful heart
when running

Charles Olson (1910-1970), an avant-garde poet and literary theorist, was born in 1910, in Massachusetts. From Wesleyan University, he received a B.A in 1932 and an M.A. the following year. He taught at Clark University and Harvard University, but his real influence began in the late 1940s as an instructor and then as rector (1951－56) at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. His concepts of poetry in the essay Projective Verse (1950), advocating a primal linkage between breathing and the phrasing of words to obtain the most forceful version of a poem, influenced many poets during the late 1950s. Olson's The Maximus Poems (1953, 1956, combined 1960) is a long sequence of poems continued in subsequent volumes, while In Cold Hell, in Thicket (1953) and The Distances (1960) contain some of his best-known shorter poems.

查爾斯·奧爾森（1910-1970），美國前衛派詩人兼文學理論家，1910年生於馬萨诸塞州。1932他自衛斯廉大學獲得了學士學位，翌年又獲碩士學位。後於克拉克大學和哈佛大學執教。1940年代後期，在北卡羅來納州的黑山學院先任教後當院長，才開始發揮影響力。他提出的“投射詩”理論，主張詩人應注意呼吸與遣詞造句之間的重要聯繫以加强诗歌的力度。他的理論和創作影響了五十年代末众多的詩人。主要诗作包括1960年發表的︰《馬克西穆斯的詩》，《在寒冷的地狱中，在灌木丛中》（1953），《距离》（1960）等。

馬克西穆斯，對他自己說
選自《馬克西穆斯的詩》

我曾不得不最後才學習
最簡單的事情。這造成了不少困難。
既使在海上我也很遲緩，取出手來，或穿過
濕淥淥的甲板。
　　航海，最終，並未成為我的職業。
但就算那是我的職業，在海上，我也和最為人熟知
的事情脫節。給耽誤了
而且不甚滿意那些個理由
說這種耽誤現在已成了
服從的特徵
　　說在緩慢的時間中
　　我們全都遲了，
　　說我們長大後會和多數人一樣
　　而單個的並不容易
　　為人瞭解
可能是，不過我在他人身上
留意到的鮮明（胭脂樹籽 ¹）
比我自己的距離
更加合乎情理。他們平日

　　表露出的機靈
　　他們做世俗的事
　　做自然界的事
　　因為我沒見識
　　哪樣都沒做過