Olson's ideas came to influence a generation of poets, including writers Duncan, Dorn, Denise Levertov, and Paul Blackburn. At 204 cm (6'8"), Olson was described as "a bear of a man", his stature possibly influencing the title of his Maximus work.Olson (1992) Maximus to Gloucester: the letters and poems of Charles Olson to the editor of the Gloucester Daily Times, 1962–1969, Ten Pound Island Book Co., p. 29, Olson wrote copious personal letters and helped and encouraged many young writers. His transdisciplinary poetics were informed by a range of disparate and learned sources, including Mayan writing, Sumerian religion, classical mythology, Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy (as exemplified by Process and Reality [1929]) and cybernetics. Shortly before his death, he examined the possibility that Chinese and Indo-European languages derived from a common source.
