Avenue of Vanishing: Poems

In lyric and narrative verse, William Olsen explores subcultures ranging from the suburban middle class to the urban drug culture to the art world, and along the way, constantly probes at the very nature of human language. Drawing surprising and illuminating connections between the political and historical, the prosaic and the personal, civilization and nature, these poems try to make sense of the individual’s experience of time, memory, and society. The range of Olsen’s images form an organic connection between the physical and the abstract and his hypnotic mixture of colloquial and eloquent language create a sound and music that are uniquely his own.