SOURCE: “‘And All Now Is War’: George Oppen, Charles Olson, and the Problem of Literary Generations,” in The Objectivist Nexus: Essays in Cultural Poetics, edited by Rachel Blau DePlessis and Peter Quartermain, The University of Alabama Press, 1999, pp. 286-93.

In the following essay Fredman explores similarities in the poetry of Oppen and Charles Olson.

The convenient notion of literary generations has been an important part of the fictional structure of literary history, helping to separate it from history proper. In literary histories, we have used named generations as markers in the assembling of an orderly narrative of innovation, struggle, triumph, and succession. By means of this generational narrative, we have been able to tell ourselves stories about “literature,” presenting it as a self-enclosed entity that constitutes its own world. Historical fact, though, can step in and disturb our recounting of these comforting tales of dynastic succession—as, for...