Projective Verse

Olson’s essay Projective Verse (1950) became their manifesto. Olson emphasized the creative process, in which the poet’s energy is transferred through the poem to the reader. Inherent in this new poetry was the reliance upon decidedly American conversational language.

his landmark essay “Projective Verse” (1950) that poetry was a form of “energy transferred from where the poet got it” to the reader. In distinction from the “closed form” of conventional poetic meter, Olson proposed an “open field” that “projects” organically from the poem’s content—i.e., the perception of…