Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970), was an important 2nd generation American modernist poet who was a crucial link between earlier figures like Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, a rubric which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Subsequently, many postmodern groups, such as the poets of the Language School, include Olson as a primary and precedent figure. He is credited as one of the thinkers who coined the term postmodern. Across the Atlantic, these various poetic movements have exerted a deep and ongoing influence on an important array of alternative and experimental writers, including Roy Fisher, Edwin Morgan, Geoffrey Hill and Mario Petrucci, behind whose works lurks Olson's ghost of language-driven inventiveness.