The Topology of Being

This study interprets Charles Olson's articulation of Being's primacy through a close Heideggerian reading of his prose tracts. It avoids the inadvertent man-centeredness pervasive in much Olson criticism, and within the context of Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology, this text asserts that Olson's poetics offers not simply an argument for structural displacement but a careful measurement of what is: a listening and responding to Being's connectedness that is -sewn in and binding/each seam- of the world. This study reveals Olson's grappling with the nature of the world, truth, the human mode of being, and language, and it concludes by arguing that in experiencing Olson's -topology-, readers are afforded the opportunity to become topologists themselves: they are challenged to gauge their own openness to Being's address."