Charles Olson
Charles Olson writing. Courtesy of Western Regional Archives.
Community gathering to announce the closing of Black Mountain College, early October, 1956.
FOCUS
English/ Writing
ROLE
Faculty, Admin
ATTENDANCE
1948 - 1957
BIRTH
1910-12-27
Worcester, MA
DEATH
1970-01-10
New York, NY
Charles Olson was a second generation modernist American poet who was a link between earlier modernist figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the third generation modernist New American poets.
Olson first taught at the college on weekends during the 1948-1949 school year. He returned to the faculty in 1951 and became Rector in 1953 after many staff members departed. Inheriting a deeply divided institution, he attempted to rebuild the school with a particular focus on writing and poetry.
There are Olson paper collections at many institutions including the University of Connecticut, Wesleyan University, Western Regional Archives, and many more.
Relationships
Wife: Constance Olson, joined Charles at the college while he taught
Author
Amanda Hartman
Amanda Hartman is the creator of BMC Yearbook, serving as the lead director, engineer, and researcher. She holds a MLIS in archive/ collections management, MA in art/ museum education, and BA in design. After working in museums and archives for a decade, she made the transition to tech and is now a software developer specializing in applications for museums, archives, and higher education.
Her interest in Black Mountain College began while working as a digital archivist with the Asheville Art Museum's BMC archive collection. She transcribed and digitized over 1500 documents created by the college. While working closely with these archives, she began independent research on the interracial program and Negro Week activities BMC, writing biographies of lesser known students and staff members. That research transformed into this BMC Yearbook project.
