Charles Olson and the Postmodern Advance George F

Home , Amiri Baraka, Charles Olson, Jonathan Williams (poet)

Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 11 Article 3 Issue 4 Fall

1980 Charles Olson and the Postmodern Advance George F. Butterick

Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview Part of the Creative Writing Commons

Recommended Citation Butterick, George F.. "Charles Olson and the Postmodern Advance." The Iowa Review 11.4 (1980): 3-27. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.2641

This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ^-&f^

5 -T5

University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org Charles Olson and the Postmodern Advance

George F. Butterick

CHARLES OLSON was always very pleased by the fact that the time he was ever a was only given psychological test?when he invited to with participate along twenty-three other poets, including William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell, and the like, as part of an examination of conducted a creativity by Harvard graduate student?the results of the test confirmed that he a had "high tolerance of disorder." The was in experiment administered 1950 by Robert N. Wilson, working under Olson's friend and fellow Melville scholar, Henry A. Murray, father and of the widely known Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), consisted of an interview and modified form of the TAT, in which visual are Not it patterns explored and narrated. insignificantly, is also known as a test it known "projective" although Olson experienced after his well was in so was no "Projective Verse" essay already press, there probably connection.1 But would this quality?a "high tolerance of disorder"?I offer, may be one of the chief characteristics of the poetry written since we as the Second World War which know "post-modern." a no use or Postmodernism is critic's term; it has popular necessity. It has its as most terms its an limits, descriptive of order do?to such extent that I came an recently upon interviewer asking Amiri Baraka a about "post-postmodern" art!2 It is, like the designation Black Moun tain a term of convenience no absolute on Poets, that has bearing reality. even matter? It is like the Middle Ages?or middle age, for that to to unlikely be defined with satisfaction all. I introduce it into the to present discussion only because it may be useful in order distinguish Charles his most Olson from immediate predecessors, and, importantly, because Olson himself used it, and used it about himself. Most or the is generally, "postmodern" (with without hyphen) used to new distinguish the energies appearing in American culture follow an outrun ing World War II, from exhausted modernism which had its course. term in The itself has gained increasing critical acceptance recent seems to a in years, until by this date it be fixity literary history. A itself in its to be a prominent literary periodical declares subtitle "journal of postmodern literature," and there have been any number of on critic Hassan essays and symposia the subject. The writings of Ihab and David Antin's essay "Modernism and Postmodernism: Approaching

4 2 come most to the Present in American Poetry" in Boundary readily a in recent American mind.3 Even California bookseller specializing wares in & Post writing offers his catalogues designated "Modern term modern Literature." The has been surveyed with all desired thor two recent oughness in articles in the journal Amerikastudien, published so in Stuttgart for the German Association for American Studies, there is no need to do that here, even if there were time.4 term was The first used, apparently, by the historian Toynbee, al is not though Olson?and this generally known?may have actually to use current to use been the first it in its application, and the first it not I time to repeatedly if consistently.5 will take the document this in so we can a it because doing have better understanding of what might mean to a be "post-modern" poet. As uses serves not to Olson it, the designation merely advance beyond an an to outmoded modernism, but it seeks alternative the entire disposi tion of mind that has dominated man's intellectual and political life since 500 B.C. As as Me in roughly early Call Ishmael, published 1947, man. Olson felt that logic and classification betrayed "Logic and clas sification had led civilization toward man, away from space" (p. 14). Now to restore man to a Olson sought from his egocentric humanism in same proper relationship with the universe, the way he says Melville man: went to to and had, and, before that, early "Melville space probe man. man same: care of find Early did the poetry, language and the statement myth" (p. 14). His classic is in "Human Universe," his finest one piece of theoretical prose, the he called the "base" of his cultural position and "the body, the substance, of my faith" (Letters for Origin, p. 69). There he explains how logic and classification intervene between man our our and the universe, "intermite participation in experience." out to restore And the only way is mythological participation in the laws nature a is act of through language which "the of the instant" rather act than "the of thought about the instant" (Human Universe, p. 4). The result is an intensified syntax which fuses man with natural processes. In an to a effort break free, post-modern poetry requires almost total and or so as systematic disordering disorientation?not much of the senses, at same time a Rimbaud proposed?but of syntax, the accompanied by demand for a re-orientation to a new, a "human universe." As we shall the is a in see, expanded syntax manifestation language of the post modern demand out of which any advance is made. The occurrence term I am aware earliest of the "postmodern" yet of

5 comes a era as in Olson's writing amid discussion of the modern "the in a to 9 age of quantity" letter Robert Creeley, August 1951, where he writes without further definition or elaboration: "I am led to this notion: world was two the post-modern projected by earlier facts," and on to goes cite the voyages of discovery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made "all the a which earth known quantity" and the develop ment of the machine in the nineteenth century. The term, however, more to appears elaborately and significantly in another letter Creeley some on days later, August 20, where Olson distinguishes "modern" man manner: . . . from the "post-modern" in the following "the modern he does ?o? to . . call the universe." In other feel[s] belong .just, quick, it, is or words, he in familiar terms, alienated, "estranged from that with ismost which he familiar." Whereas, Olson continues, "my assumption is any POST-MODERN is born with the ancient confidence that, he It is same to does belong." this "ancient confidence" that enables Olson are or to begin "Human Universe" with "There laws," write those words which first to "I am Allen Ginsberg said attracted him Olson: one/with my skin." Indeed, it is the same confidence that enables Olson to name his hero, Maximus. to use term to Olson continues the "post-modern" in his letters to Creeley and Cid Corman from this time (1951-52), in his "Special View of History" lectures from 1956, and in essays like "The Law," which he saw as a to "Human Universe" Universe" sequel ("Human was itself almost entitled "The Laws"), from 3 October 1951. In it he men explores the question, "how did other than the modern (orWest writes ern) ground the apprehension of life," and in response, he of the as on first half of the present century "the marshalling yard which the was to we or modern turned what have, the post-modern, the post are West." Earlier in the piece, he had summarized what for him the characteristics of the Western inheritance which makes up modern man. our can as a First of all, history be viewed closed "box," from to As in roughly 500 B.C. 1950 A.D. "Human Universe," the fault lies to with the three "great Greeks," Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, who reason man gether invented the which has dominated and "from whom," a writes Olson, "it is always my argument, the 'West' followed." As the result of the development of abstract thought by Greeks, the poet West writes, "it is my impression that intellectual life in the has been to a and still great degree stays essentially descriptive and analytical." His a roots: conclusion is general renunciation of the West in its that

6 and of as Socrates (the generalizer) Thucydides (the proponent history an and that "the division of "truth," abstract) "date exactly together," FORM from CONTENT . . . follows" therefrom. And in this essay as as it is clear that the "Definitions by Undoings," from early 1952, is to "the Western for "post-modern" likewise opposed tradition," much the same reasons.6 new to Western culture. It on all the Now, it is nothing reject goes an come to time?and to such extent that the time has certainly reaffirm himself?in . . . this its accomplishments. Indeed, Olson railing against was or time it the East, those contemporaries who sought their practice or in East at whatever him ecstasy principally the (he railed gave energy, as out that the East of course, any high-spirited man)?pointed anything was or or a sense had to offer, whether it calm selflessness of the kalpa West or had. believe (an endless but measurable eon) the also, already, (I was self-effacement as an exercise in the subject under discussion spiritu But is true the demand is that the al discipline.) it also that post-modern West curb its excesses and interferences which divide man from nature and from himself. occurs in review "The "Post-modern" again in Olson's writings the Herman written for the New Materials and Weights of Melville," writes of D. H. Lawrence as Republic in August of 1952, where Olson "the one man of this century to be put with Melville, Dostoevsky and with modern in such Rimbaud (men who engaged themselves reality as to use to of us who want to take fierceness and pity be of real any on . . The term and the the post-modern .") (Human Universe, p. 112). same four as those who make our or authors, precisely possible any occur a short while later in an "post-modernism," again important statement written on while await autobiographical Election Day, 1952, returns in Stevenson would ing the of the national elections which Adlai to a New lose Eisenhower?a time when former politico and Dealer own It comes in the in might very well reconsider his identity! piece of used to title which his famous phrase, "archeologist morning," (post occurs: humously) his collected poems, also

... to a or a writer. I find it awkward call myself poet If there are no walls there are no names. This is the morning, after is the dispersion, and the work of the morning methodology: to use on is I am how oneself, and what. That my profession. an and acts which archeologist of morning. And the writing

7 I bear on are not find the present job (I) from Homer back, forward; and (II) from Melville on, particularly himself, were Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, and Lawrence. These the mod ern men we are we are who projected what and what in, who men broke the spell. They put forward into the post-modern, the post-humanist, the post-historic, the going live present, the "Beautiful Thing." (Additional Prose, p. 40)

As a extent use term are final example of the of Olson's of the (there can some sense many others that be documented)7 and for further of own term Olson's understanding of how far the could take him, he writes in a note from the time of his New Sciences of Man lectures in 1953: "we are now in a which best be called early ' stage may 'post even modern, in order that the theory of openness may be free from the which very gains made the openness possible?free from all argument, & thus into is or at more already that stage of will (which after, least even can come necessary than understanding) from which LAWS into existence. ..." The term thus had a currency for the poet, like those terms we archaic 'istorin, and myth, among the others will touch upon in order to into briefly delineate his accomplishment, his advance the

post-modern. term In his admirable survey of the in American cultural history, out to Michael K?hler points that "post-modern" appears have been first used in a in by Toynbee chart the 1946 abridged edition of his famous Study ofHistory. There Toynbee assigns the date of 1875 for the beginning new era of the he calls "Post-Modern," that following the "Modern" notes period of 1475-1875.8 K?hler also that this is exactly the date that Olson cites when he writes in "A FIRST DRAFT of a READING list in the new not SCIENCES OF MAN" from 1955, "It is yet gauged how nature much the of knowledge has changed since 1875. Around that date man known universe to man reapplied techniques of the himself, and man as as the change has made non-Socratic (or non-Aristotelian) geom eters of the early 19th century made the universe non-Euclidean."9 And indeed is in K?hler quite right noticing the similarity, for?although not not he does say this, does fully make the connection?the year 1875 is the same one to precisely Olson chooses identify the beginnings of what he calls the New Sciences of Man, those same sciences he believed the to provided methodological alternative humanism and modernism. The coincidence is too great to be overlooked, and led K?hler to

8 wonder if there wasn't some indication that Olson had drawn the term no "post-modern" directly from Toynbee. There is, however, such in form evidence. A Study of History, whether its original multi-volume or its more was not the in popular abridgement, among books Olson's to library, and Olson mentions Toynbee only three times, my knowl in in each case as a of historian edge, his writings, disparagingly, type to be avoided.10 Of course, Olson might have read Toynbee early? not in as since first A though college, many had done, the volumes of were not Study of History published until 1934, the year after he had no received his MA from Wesleyan; and there is indication the work was or courses part of the assigned recommended reading in his graduate at it is even in history Harvard. Still, odd, uncanny, that of all the dates to an two users available mark the beginning of era, the earliest of the term same one to "postmodern" in English should choose the accompa or term. have ny illustrate their Another observer might chosen 1914; or some 1863, the date of the Salon des Refuses in Paris, which give for the birth of the Avant Garde; or, as Olson himself elsewhere, 1897, New Brooks Adams' date for the beginning of the American Empire an (Human Universe, p. 135). But 1875? That's extraordinary coincidence, inescapably close. it seem at a too Although would first coincidence highly improbable, reasons same both writers hold different for choosing the date. Toynbee, as in the date in explained his Study of History, offers exclusively political onset terms, for the general of nationalism and the spread of industrial at ism.11 Now, Olson may have been encouraged by Toynbee (if all), but own reason a so he gives his as?with specificity typical of him?the core the date for the founding of the science of archeology, the of as its so-called New Sciences of Man, which he identifies having had start at with the excavations Olympus under the German archeologist successor at Wilhelm Dorpfeld, Schliemann's collaborator and Troy? to the first, apparently, exercise the rigors of classification while preserv to exact ing the larger context, and thus, the first apply the methods of science to man himself.12 It is not that Olson uses the year 1875 to mark of as tools the birth postmodernism such, but of the that make possible a advance. He writes in for Mountain post-modern his plan Black College in 1956:

It was . . . new archeology which broke loose the birth of it was of not knowledge around 1875, the digging up the past

9 mere or was the recording repeating the history of it. It the objectification, the literal seeking and finding of the objects of man the past of which took down all generalization with it, or . . . made the specific pin gold piece the evidence of the oral existence man. For as mat of example: the mythological the ter will remain nothing but removed tales of somebody else one us a means to unless any of achieves take seriously what on And do goes inside ourself. you can't that by simply sitting in over around wonder and fantasy and trouble what happens to one or one to what dreams. You have have the experience out of hard objects, of panning, of what does wash when all the water is out of it.13

term as So that although Toynbee may have used the "post-modern" as it came to early 1946, appears Olson the designation independently in own 1951, through his observation and understanding of the world. But before exploring further the grounds for his rejection of modern ism and suggesting the qualities of post-modernism which characterize Olson's poetry, let me first say a bit more about what these New Sciences saw as means to man of Man were, that he the advance into post modernism. summer at Recognizing that the occasional sessions Black Mountain more terms in the past had elicited far support in of tuition-paying at students than the regular program, the total enrollment of which that time at an to save wavered 35, Olson, in attempt the foundering school, a were to proposed in 1952 series of what he called "institutes." These in own be the crafts, pottery, theater, the natural sciences, along with his an special child, institute in what he called the "New Sciences of Man." was to at in was This be held the college the early spring of 1953, and to to originally include geographer Carl Sauer, who Olson invited be the "governing lecturer" of the series, ethnobotanist Edgar Anderson, archeologists Robert Braidwood and Christopher Hawkes, and Carl von sent Jung, although only Braidwood and Marie Luise Franz, by Jung a in his place, finally came, for week apiece that March. In inviting to Christopher Hawkes come?whose book The Prehistoric Foundations of not Europe he found only informative but methodologically valuable? intentions Institute Olson summarizes his regarding the Institute: "this is as as an state now planned thorough attack upon the of real knowledge as us on can want the few of who stand such grounds make it.What I

10 to is to here or four men who and do bring together three can, together, for such as attend, examine three sciences simultaneously?what I think me you, of all men, will follow in, if I put them this way: (1), the or what Sauer had called 'the of science of place, morphology landscape' . . . the science of the of same in ; (2), culture, or, morphology [defined a to as man similar letter Braidwood "that discipline displaced evolution and the science of about which he adds: "the by" ]; (3), mythology," will know and least familiar, perhaps, but you Jung Ker?nyi's attempt to to it & be said to be what give circulation it: might vastly quickly art divided between to and religion have previously themselves" (letter Hawkes, 3 January 1953).14 was to a series of at least Olson himself pave the way by delivering in five weeks of and March eight background lectures the February came. He the titles in another letter before the invited speakers gives to 2 1953 in one to Corman the Christopher Hawkes, February (also same to on day, and Creeley February 23):

The Cave, or, Painting The Cup, or, Dance The Woman, or, Sculpture The Valley, or, Language The Plateau, or the Horse, or, War Hero Lagash, or, the Thebes, or, the City The Sun, or the Sum, or, Self

not seem to or intact. But ?although all do have survived, survived we to what do have of the lectures?which Olson describes Creeley, 23 as sort enor March 1953, "a of researching made public"?reveal the mous at labor he put into the program (nowhere hinted in Martin Duberman's brief account in his Black Mountain: A Study in Community).15 Everywhere present in the lectures is Olson's energy and capacity for research, his Goethian scope and wide grasp of information, the sheer to a venture. boldness attempt such Not least, there is displayed Olson's belief in the New Sciences themselves. He tells his audience at the of science is I am to beginning of his third lecture, "my joy such, apt most a are either of its forget people have double-trouble: they captive to see science to or mechanisms (unable how Heisenberg restored man) are it as of lustre they full of the old religion-art suspicion of robber the

11 man . . . of the daydreams of My joy of the sciences of this Institute is this: that it enables any of us to inhabit man in his story backward & as to as us forward close exactly any of actually inhabit ourselves." It not or a is of consequence that Olson does shy from reject science like romantic but its as a humanist, freely acknowledges usefulness "tool." He never to the to as was had any objection scientific method, long that understood to be "a which man must master and not what stage [it is] to are means to taken be, final discipline." Logic and classification only an not to never end "ways end, END, which," he insists, "is more than . . . this instant, than you, this instant, in action." (Human Universe, p. 5) The series to as a as resulting of lectures Olson hoped publish book, wrote on he Jonathan Williams 1 March 1953, under the title, The were most to Chiasma (or intersection). They his ambitious attempt be in to comprehensive prose after "Human Universe" and prior A Special View in ofHistory, and many ways go beyond those later lectures in scope and of The to man clarity address. lectures push back Cro-Magnon (they are in to continued almost fifteen years later Olson's letters John Clarke, as are aware published Pleistocene Man), and while many readers of interest in the or more is Olson's Maya Sumerians, far profound this interest in the of man in an effort to origins himself, bring him beyond modern. The seems man returns to the formula inescapable: the deeper his archaic, primoridal, pre-rationalist condition, the further beyond modernism he advances. to The science that Olson discovered take him beyond modernism was mythology, assisted by Jung and Ker?nyi's suggestion in the title on a of their book together, Essays Science ofMythology, that mythology be a science.16 term or notion at could indeed The the stopped Olson first; as a to he resisted it, evidenced in letter Creeley from 25 October 1950, as But where he rejects the phrase, "science of mythology," "crap." not was what he could reject that myth, in the definition he found in to the introduction the Jung and Ker?nyi book (p. 7), from Malinow ski's in Primitive was a as Myth Psychology, "reality lived." Mythology, saw was "the assertion an more Malinowski it, of original, greater, and a important reality" through which man's "present life, fate, and work" were one governed, and the knowledge of which provided him "on the hand with motives for ritual and moral acts for the on [or poet, poems], the other hand with directions for their performance [his poetics]." was same This followed by Olson's discovery around the time of

12 as classical scholar J. A. K. Thomson's identification of mythology "muth or is is had the advan ologos," "what said (of what said)," which also tage?in Thomson's presentation?of linking that with the "history" at same time a Olson had always been interested in, and being the to one definition that corresponded the he knew from Jane Harrison as as in (myth mouth, mythos muthos)?which got narrative, the story, of art as dromenon or enactment?so that his the spoken equivalent act, aesthetics of the "instant" could emerge intact.17 are sources These, then, the principal for Olson's understanding of to myth, in addition Freud and Frazer earlier, and what he knew in his mother was said to genetically, instinctively, blood (his believe said in America most in leprechauns?although that has been about Irish or sources mothers grandmothers18). These of understanding supply and an support him until the end. In essay entitled, directly, "The Science written in New of, Mythology," 15 January 1953 anticipation of the Man is a Sciences of institute, Olson says: "I propose that mythology an word to use for the present to characterize observable series of as as is to cover matter phenomena decisively physiology taken the of our He care is in body's functioning ..." continues: "the of myth your it or hands?you are, whether you know not, the living myth?each of not at own at you?which you neglect, only your peril, but the peril man. For men are as of when lose their mythology, they dead?simply, to that it is what used be called the soul of them, and, by the law of the soul force of if lose it?like if lose (the palpable " it), you you your are not is body?you alive. Later, Olson will insist that mythology the as as same "hard" science any of the taxonomic sciences such physics ten own notes (Muthologos, I, 46). Some thousand pages of his survive as a evidence of just how rigorous study mythology could be and the demand he made of it. New to at In speaking of the Sciences his audience Black Mountain, own is Olson says his specialty the "science of image." Image?and in its narrative to image form, story?is the alternative logic and clas on a sification?which is why the poet concludes "Human Universe" myth. Image is unique and indivisible, it defies comparison, which, Olson writes in a first version of his "Human Universe" essay, "has lain . . . at the root of humanism as one of its most evil characteristics." a more "Image," he says further, "denotes much active process, deriving as it does from the root of the Latin verb 'imitare,' to imitate, and thus is to closely joined the implicitly dramatic action of the concept 'to

13 an mime,' and bears always in the direction of direct representation of or as original object act, not, symbol goes, in the contrary direction, towards an or to toward generalization, abstract sign, figure, type stand . . . or a in the place of the original object act."19 Olson had become like he Me "specialist" very much says Ahab had (Call Ishmael, p. 12), not into a concentrating all space, "the form of whale called Moby into is an Dick" like Ahab, but Gloucester. Gloucester image of possibil a is man. ity for city the way Maximus the image of possibility for was own own In many ways Olson his myth and his image. He was, as aman It many know by now, of unavoidable physical presence. might was was be said he obsessed, preoccupied with size, ruled by it, for there no own. One can place he could go without his readily imagine the mixed feelings of the young Olson reading Thomas Wolfe's story, a a "Gulliver: The Story of Tall Man," in June 1935 Scribner's magazine, some one write a a which begins (p. 328): "Some day will book about man who was too tall?who lived forever in a dimension that he did not fit, and for whom the proportions of everything?chairs, beds, doors, rooms, shoes, clothes, shirts, and socks, the berths of Pullman cars and the bunks of transatlantic liners, together with the rations of food, drink, love, and women which most men on this earth have found sufficient to their measure?were too small." And that man, that Gulliver, was six six! In his only foot notebook (entry for 9 July 1935), Olson records so summer: his reading far that Malraux 'sMans Fate, Auden's Poems, Dorothy Savers' Nine Tailors, Hemingway, etc., and adds: "Of all this the most is an unmentioned short Wolfe's important " thing?Thomas a as 'Gulliver?The Story of Tall Man,' which he describes "achingly true a in exposing the hell of tall man's life." a to a one Jonathan Williams tells story of going movie theater night with Olson in Asheville, N.C., the city outside Black Mountain?the Isis Theater, no less?to see a film called, yes, "The Bride of Franken at as screen went came stein." And the end, the dark and the lights on, center to and he and Olson stood up in the of the theater preparing go, rest Williams noticed the of the audience, good Asheville citizens, were tradesmen and their wives, farmers from the hills, eyeing Olson to peculiarly. Wide-eyed, unable take their eyes off him, they inched further and further away, making their way without further hesitation to was as were the doors. It if they witnessing?and suddenly participat screen ing in?a continuity of the movie, the image from the become live in their midst!

14 vast Or the picture of Olson moving through the enclosed space of a crowded airline terminal, every head turned to follow him, with his overcoat his shoulders a top-knot and cloaking like giant Samurai, head No after head, looking up from newspapers, schedules, mother's laps. to Eric Havelock 's wonder he responded description of the Mycenean as a hero, the model for the oral prince, "conspicuous" public figure. was not an size in It unattractive sight, his person, just strange and it as size awesome, and Olson took advantage of he did the of his voice. this and It be Certainly the poems reflect quality this authority. would too too almost too a so all peculiar, precious, perverse thought, for large a man to a a How incise only haikus, sonnet, rondeau. well he responded to me a Give me crater Melville's cry, "Give condor's quill! Vesuvius' an . . . so is a for inkstand! Such, and magnifying, the virtue of large to its and liberal theme! We expand bulk." (Moby Dick, chap. CIV) was an to to in Maximus attempt live up his full potentiality size. It was a that one of perhaps only fluke Maximus's manifestations, a on was James Merry who wrestled bull Dogtown Commons, exactly 67", Olson's size. But there can be little doubt that Maximus himself in were is named part autobiographically. There indications all along that be so. Who else does Olson seek to his of this might begin story narrative America with, when taking his first steps toward the proposed a to be West?which evolved into (alternatively long poem) called itself The Maximus Poems?but Paul Bunyan. And how uncomfortably obvious name a a man is the Bigmans for hero, prototype of Maximus, from who mail from an outfitter Size. How bought his clothing by called King immoderate, then, is the name Maximus itself, how immodest? With a name is a to worst a like that, how hero avoid all the qualities of Mohammed Ali, who also called himself "The Greatest"? not a man an It should be imagined that Olson, who could "lift a arm/flawlessly" and who walked with spring, would feel because of his unusual size alone that "man is estranged from that with which he so as to a is most familiar." Nor would he be overweening think that is is some writer's subject his single human life alone. Instead, "size" men be He asks his audience at Black thing all might capable of. Mountain in one of his New Sciences of Man lectures: "What is your or move men experience of your size? do you, not, among the herd of sense as not out with the of yourself yet filling your size? do you, thus, and than how others have the feeling of being smaller, both than yrself to . . . am most our time we take ourselves appear you? I right that of

15 to be smaller than others, to be smallness in face of the world?" Of course not mean mere to he does physical size. Again, Melville scholar Merton Sealts he writes (7 March 1952): "one of the central preoccupa tions man necessities?is of today?one of his central exactly this prob measure own lem of hero: which is, any time, man's of his possibilities is to ?how large he?" With Maximus, Olson allows his possibilities enormous. "I am not named /for no cause." stay ['The Greatest'] matter Olson had already discussed this of size in "Projective Verse," content how the of the poem changes for the poet, "the dimension of we see our to his line itself changes" (as will in discussion of syntax act . . . to come), and how the "projective leads dimensions larger than a man," (Human Universe, pp. 59, 60) leads to, indeed, Maximus. And own could he have been speaking of anything but his hero when he writes in "The Gate and The Center" of the size of the earliest Sumerian as we cannot now see & kings, saying: "I have this dream, that just say we the size of these early HUMAN KINGS, cannot, by the very lost token of their science old human science of and ["the archetype figures we he "see what size man can be once archetype event"]," cannot, says, more once turn I capable of, the of the flow of his energies that speak as is its of the WILL TO COHERE admitted, and energy taken up" is exercises (Human Universe, p. 21). This precisely the will Maximus to to a once when he "compells" Gloucester "yield" itself, be polis a not even again, "coherence yet new" (Maximus II, 15; I, 11). Maximus, must at a it be granted, is Olson's attempt post-modern hero. Maximus fulfills Olson's mythic ambitions. He absorbs the disorder, on name grows large it. Maximus is saved from the presumption of his to to an by his ties Gloucester and historical namesake, Maximus of to Tyre, that both relieves him of egotism and allows him participate a not an or in the past. He is man, allegorical Everyman Red Cross or sense a to Knight; if allegorical only in Keats's that man's life, be of must a It any worth, be "continual allegory." is Gloucester that gives Maximus dimension, a Gloucester of his own creation. Maximus is a a to a proposition, proportion be filled, challenge thrown ahead from the moment sum of its naming. Maximus is the of man; he grows by what all men?Lou Douglas, John Smith, John Winthrop, Enyalion and the to a not a other heroes of the poem?contribute him. He is model an not a mirror; "image," of man, but?the poem "Maximus of Glouces to a a ter" (III, 101) is careful say?"of man." He is magnification, men can Maximus metaphor for human possibility. All be if they

16 practice themselves like William Stevens, if they "make things,/not just live off nature" (I, 31), if they resist. even And he succeeds, though in the final poem of the series?"my car are to wife my my color and myself"?the forces finally equal the to hero, have caught up with him. Maximus yields back the man, the to heroic is pinched down the human by the pain of having been alive to and the bewilderment of being about lose that life. The components are to at ease in of the poet's life put rest, their simplicity. This does mean to a as a not any need bemoan like sad trumpet the poems failure. is a It such commonplace that all modern long poems have been failures, that is including The Wasteland, The Bridge, The Cantos, Paterson, A?if ever a to are helpful way talk about them. They only failures because we no success is. longer know what Maximus is a creature in of language; the "Man theWord, "Jonathan Williams' editorial note to the first volume calls him. He has no life our or outside the poem and memories of it. Among the six thousand so not one pieces of mail preserved among Olson's papers, addressed ever Maximus is as simply "Maximus, Gloucester," reached him. only as he can He remains large the language speak. unbound by the fallacy sentence as a of the "completed thought." Instead, he extends the sentence?or must the poetic line?increasingly onward until what be sentence sentence said gets said, completes itself?often with another (a as on within the "sentence"), in "A Later Note Letter # 15" (Maximus It we one II, 79). may help if think of the grammatical sentence, the terms a sentence?a of words, in of prison time-conditioned event, a not "doing time," stretch, of the pen, but in the "pen." The reader is released from the sentence, that cell of language, only when his "time" is up, when the meaning has been fully served. Thus the many commas unclosed parentheses, the proliferation of and relative clauses, dashes, colons in the poems (in "A Later Note," three open parentheses and three colons in eighteen lines propel the poem). The syntactical unit is as as as large needs be. "The lines which hook-over should be read out to or though they lay right and flat the horizon Eternity," Olson the readers of advised his Selected Writings (p. 158). is no a or This longer condition question of traditional syntax but of events as occur parataxis, the recording of the order of they in nature, even as in "Hotel we mimetically, the Steinplatz" poem will shortly look at in the greater detail, tracing fluctuations of the falling, blowing at same time the a snow, the poet reveals his interiority through medita

17 tion told in terms of the Norse "End of theWorld." Or the wonderful

example of the late Maximus poem (III, 155-61) snatched from the flow one one of event, written between o'clock and three June morning in a in at the checkbook, all the poet had his pockets time, while standing near or in under streetlights the Blynman Canal "Cut" Gloucester, cars curious as to in being inspected by prowling police the great shape the shadows. to as Syntactic strain forces the reader perceive the world Maximus to It us to in does, make his discoveries. compels (his verb) participate our own. course his world of language until Gloucester, too, is Not of coast the Gloucester of the Massachusetts which this very day may be intermittent over its narrow streets having showers and wharf pilings or and back-lying hills, where the smell of the frying batter General its is as over Mills developed for Gorton's fishsticks pervasive in the air as as Main Street the gulls. That Gloucester might be for many just Edward Dorn writing in 1959 thought he'd find it: "I would be bored to But sickness," he predicted, "walking through Gloucester."20 the I is a Gloucester of which speak polis of the mind, built and preserved by the rhythms of knowing. The obsessiveness of Olson's syntax holds to turns as as to the of his mind closely that mind does Gloucester, archeologically, exhaustively. Much of the difficulty in Olson's poetry?and who would have it any other way?derives from just this torsion. This is not the occasional or or most practice of ellipses enjambment syncopation that Olson?like even most an to poets, the formal?is also capable of. It is effort drive against the limits of reality itself, where the language is done violence or to, and with it, inherited, conformist linearity. Syntax yields gets as to broken, broken through, in the "Footnote" "John Burke": "And past-I-go/ Gloucester-inside/being Fosterwise of/Charley-once-boy/ in sides" (Maximus I, 144), or in "AN ART CALLED GOTHONIC": trace or ad-/vance" "We wood /path/ will not/hasten/our/step-wise are conscious to write Yana (Maximum III, 170)?where there attempts to for an alternative. and Gothonic in English, press But also the English?or American, actually?itself is stretched, the written on one in words practically top of another their tumble forth to to so get free: "I said my friend my/life is recently hairy honkie-/hard & too to I am horny that ex/tent far far younger/now than though of course me I am/not twenty any more, only/the divine alone interests so out in nerves at/all and much else is other-/wise I hump hard &/crash

18 and smashed/existence only" (Maximus III, 197-98). Or the episode of steam or or in the the toy shovel (or any modern toy goods product) Venetian poem for Jack Clarke, "Golden Light" (Maximus III, 213):

that model toy steam shovel I bot theWaiting Station for Chas Peter's I in a 1st Christmas Gloucester (age almost 3) and stood naked rage both fr. tiredness (& from damn) and the goddamn toy one was a exact it wasn't it goddamn literally practically model crank-crank & all that shit in the world: it was too much both for him and myself, and his mother like any mother doing that thing all from love, that somehow the it won't if it and goddamn thing might satisfy. Bullshit, don't, forever!

what Wordsworth meant Now, that's speech! (Is that, by the way, by men in a state It is of "the real language of of vivid sensation"?) not, mas course, where the poetry, sheer poetry, lies?and there is control, the verse is terful control and lightness otherwise?but point is, the open at to include the sudden or excrescences enough, any given point, warps or rages of being. same At the time, Olson's language gives up neither its commonality nor its semantic intent. There is no instance in Olson I am aware of not To a more accurate where the words do "mean" something. achieve or is use view reality, word order dislocated, the troops (I military conscious that not "avant terminology here, only "parataxis" but garde" the words are to out originally had that usage), troops of ordered fall or are in to a revolution of deployed guerrilla position wage language to a closest man's given shape, where language itself is double helix. a Indeed, there is that late Maximus poem (III, 117-21) written in swirl as on the page, literally, visually, until, totally caught up in itself the own it in a woe. In poet by his cares, ends snarl of another poem two of are crossed over one (Maximus III, 110), lines language another, a and were it not for an on demanding simultaneity, initial capital one, some to there would be question which read first. not mean to I do suggest that this heightened, strained condition is or is most unrelieved throughout Olson's long serial poem, that such to man. We of to natjarally satisfying lead lives sufficient regularity sleep once or eat a every 24 36 hours, while awake, have pulse, and the like. are or can not It's just that reaches called for that the old grasps forms allow.

19 uses strain Olson himself repeatedly images of and contortion in speaking of how poems got written. In "Poetry and Truth" he describes a as block of moveable type, with the printer "under your words in order to make the letters of them. Which always delights me," he continues, "as a creation. ... so problem of In fact I would go far?if you will excuse my Americanism?to think that you write that way. That you as were a write though you underneath the letters, And I take that hell a I is on of lot larger. would think that the hoof-print of the Creator in same the bottom of Creation, exactly that sense." (Muthologos, II, 34) He its describes the Rose of the World poem, reproduced in holograph in Maximus as an to widdershins counter spiral III, attempt "go [i.e., & write both inside in ... & to and another clockwise], R[ight] L[eft]," as as low wa late Maximus poem (III, 197-201) "written though below had ter."21 Paul Blackburn long ago accused him of twisting the issue: was "He sd, 'You go all around the subject.' And I sd, 'I didn't know it a He I sub-/ject.' sd, 'You twist' and sd, 'I do.' He said other things. And I it is not a didn't say anything." The point is, subject until the poet it one. are no to makes There preconceived, predetermining forms be no Forms accommodated, preferred categories. reveal themselves only act is it. It is by the of the poem: "nothing possible without/doing where test all the the the lies, malgr?/ thought and all pell-mell of/proposing it. it out or Or thinking living it/ahead of time" (Maximus III, 190). It a is willed organicism. contorts enters Often the poem and twists itself, into digressions, all to are too escape anticipated patterns which simply facile and belie the to in It complexity the poet knows be the world. might be said that such a poem creates its own difficulties, which it then must seek to resolve, For in one not Harry Houdini-like. example, necessarily successful but next to somewhat curious and noticeable late poem?the last poem in so un Archaeologist of Morning (p. [238])?even something egregiously and as a is and grammatical confusing double negative allowed sought to a raised advantage of. The double negative appears sustain paradox earlier in the poem: that neurosis, termed characteristic of the old Norse, must the pre-Hesiodic Greeks, and the earliest Celts (and this surely be an irony, further throwing the poem into complexity), is (such neurosis a is) prerequisite for what the poet calls, probably with further irony, "modern Non-Neurotic Man, the Neue Klasse of/ freedom." And as or "a proof illustration, quotes lady/Poet who caHsJhefself/an Artist,"22 am I am an who, by the very stridency of her protest?"I free, Artist,

20 I am Her the/ Poetry"?reveals her chains. claims?ordinarily, alto in gether attractive, and actually, her original poems, basic feminist terms outcry?are rendered shrill and unconvincing and, indeed, in of seems to of at But what be the subject the poem, the least, high-strung. it the point is, is only the totally absorbing sweep of these last lines that offers the poem (all that has gone before) any integrity and resolves the uncertain stanza. So is in paradox proposed by the opening much held an abeyance, suspended, until the poem?by accumulated argument of to images and facts?has the authority reveal, and only then, the truth it bears. is in terms Such syntax what Donald Davie's might be called "subjec one is to us tive," that is, "whose function please by the fidelity with in which it follows the 'form of thought' the poet's mind,"23 but goes in one beyond Davie's definition decisive sense, because the "form" may not a to yet be in the poet's mind. "Who knows what poem ought sound It is a like? until it's thar?" still question of where the poet acquires not "form" for his thought. Postmodernist poetry does accept precon into its cement is ceived forms, like fourteen lines, which poured. it is time Rather, intent, like all arts, upon discovering the space of the as wrote to world for itself. As early 13 July 1953, Olson English author Mason: is with to a Ronald "The quarrel discourse?and thus, up extreme not certain, but point, with traditional syntax. Because it is to at is no to to possible say everything once, reason, my mind, lose the of this which is which advantage pressure (or compression) speech [,] it wants to be: that it rushes into the mouth to crowd out to someone to else what it is is pressing in the heart & mind be said." Syntactic flexibility occasionally yields sprightly economies and syn as # copations, such this syntactical sharing in lines from "Letter 41": run out new me "I back home of the moon/makes fun of in each puddle on the road" (Maximus II, 1), where instead of subordination into clauses, occurs a to there "Siamese" sentence, joined head tail, the object of the in sentence prepositional phrase the previous becoming the subject of one. sometimes to the subsequent Although the openness leads periphra to a is sis, and eventually, perhaps, mannerism. Occasionally it only the or creates a to poet's great will vivaciousness that gravity enough hold or meaning in sway, where the wheels do leave the road, pulls them back as in "Poem 143. The on, this passage from Festival Aspect," speaking of the god Ganesha: "Through the mountain/through the bole/of any tree it were through the adamantine/he passes/as though nothing. Only

21 the God himself/of whom he is the frazzled stalk/in each of the more water . . . coolness, and ease, of his power/is than "?which Olson saves is not etc. then by saying, "Water equal/to the/ Flower" (Maximus to a some III, 74-75), bringing the poem satisfying end. Of course, of turn. in a rust Most the poems don't make the They end heap and there. notable is the FROM mightily ambitious, cosmogonie "[MAXIMUS, an to Hesiod into American DOGTOWN?IV]," attempt bring (with some time Old Norse support). The poet exhausted himself by the he got to Love in the poem. is Individuated syntax the linguistic consequence of'istorin. Maximus, as a verb?as the verb Olson once said he was?is the 'istorin of the sentence. In "Letter, May 2, 1959" (Maximus I, 145), there is the actual out on House pacing and recording of the distances the old Meeting now Plain of Gloucester, covered by modern settlement. The poet jots on an a out the figures air-letter from Scottish editor he pulled of his writes in pocket, and them the poem along with soundings from the as exam earliest known chart of Gloucester Harbor by Champlain, both as narrative of out is ples of mapping and "finding for yourself." This not the of truly physiological writing; only famous "breath" the projec man tive poet, but the total body of gotten back into his composition, verse a are written our making of his "human universe." Poems with not our our or bodies, tongues, calloused thick uncalloused tapering or fingers, rhythmically bobbing heads alone. Olson wrestling the lec tern at a act are Beloit is metaphor for the of writing itself. If there are not creation is roughnesses, they only non-Euclidean, but because a spasm. To live second upon second, as Olson well knew, added up to "40 hours" each day. us once to This brings again the postmodern demand. Postmodern poetry categorically includes more?dream data, imparted messages, occurrences chance (and reoccurrences), fortuitous rhymes, misspell we ings, frustrations, the blanks Pound said should be left in for what don't know, stanzas, vulgarity, allusions, direct confessions, philosophi It more of the cal waxings, personal waning, aesthetic gossip. demands reader, proportionally. The syntax itself exhibits the postmodern "high to tolerance for disorder." Such poetry is not be mistaken for gross our trust. It is even to test our randomness, pilings, that abuse intended One faith in the representative power of language. practices the 'istorin of the sentence?to find out for oneself. The meter is the measure of the man not of the line.

22 in A late Maximus poem written the Hotel Steinplatz while in Berlin on a to a serve as a visit give reading, will last illustration (Maximus III, on two 179-80). The poet, in full loneliness Christmas Day, days before a his fifty-sixth birthday, and having recently suffered minor heart snow attack, watches the falling outside his window. The observed mirrors snow external phenomenon the poet's internal condition, the of to swept, noble anguish it, extending the archaic depths of the Even out it is not a mythological. there, gazing the window, all fixed flow: the snow hesitates, is blown about and transformed into rain, before to snow It is an thickening back again. astoundingly rich occasion, and it not all of cinematically captured?but frozen?by the poem. Before as the gloomy winter afternoon, the poet stands Odin, who had sacrificed nine on himself for poetry by hanging days Yggdrasill, theWorld Tree, a on cross. his side pierced by spear, like Christ the The pain in the poet's side from his overstressed heart recalls both Odin's wounded side and water a sure that of Christ, from which blood and then ran, sign of his wet snow death (on this day commemorating his birth). The evokes the dew on itself torn sprinkled Yggdrasill, constantly gnawed and by the creation. is no animals of Above all, there self-pity, only the grandeur reenactment. of the mythic are two There simultaneous tracks in the poem?a technique that appears already in "To Gerhardt, There, Among Europe's Things," more a not although here interwoven. There is twin reel of syntax that only allows the time element in?the archaic time of the Norse Eddas concurrent with the suffering, snowing present?but "proprioceptive fuses external and internal conditions. That we have "the uni ly" is, verse flowing-in, inside" (Additional Prose, p. 19). Description banished, a uniqueness is restored. It is total mythological experience. are The internal conditions the poet's feelings, but also the primordial recesses where the myths from the Eddas remain active. The poet's are recent feelings both bodily (the pain of illness) and psychological on a (alone Christmas in strange city, his health uncertain, the death of his wife less than three years before still haunting him). But it is from it or one wants to use other depths?call the archaic, the unconscious, if so a boring term?that the poet speaks and that Maximus lives. The moves to a seeress narrative incorporate the words of whose story is told in the old Norse Baldrs Draumar. Sought by Odin, called up from the to answer as dead and forced his questions, she cries, just the poem has man me me on it, "who is this who drives all the way/ who drives down

23 this on beaten rain wonder the weary path?/Snowed by snow, by [no recalls her and identifies with /drenched with the poet her] dew, long is over I lay dead." Her identity taken wholly by Maximus, without an to further differentiation, making him Odin himself,24 yielding the At moment snow anguish of the cry, this poem itself. that the gives way. it seman The narrative, although progresses?both syntactically and mimetic tically?remains non-linear. The shifting, syntax carries the poem, allows Maximus another manifestation of his nature. The poet is fully absorbed by the scene, and merges?without differentiation of voice?into the mythic, chanting words of the seeress, assuming her as own. experience his At that moment, in the grip of that power, with as it the realization of what has been wrung from him?as abruptly all began, he emerges, like Rimbaud, "on the other side of despair"?the snow Here at we the true having suddenly ceased. last have "mythologi in an a man cal man" "archeological present,"25 post-modern completely his his possessed by myth, completely repossessed of mythic life, myth hood (and his method). There will always be Battles of the Books, and the battle of the or to Ancients and the Moderns, the struggle of any age individual gain is an assertive term. It to self-identity. Postmodern, then, rather seeks put distance between the preceding generation (as what cultural genera tion at same time to does not) the adequately engage the problems of own a course at one's lifetime. When Olson taught Buffalo designated as one was to see in the catalogue "Modern Poetry," I for curious who would he or he include. Would begin with Whitman Pound, would he to or or have anything say about Lowell Roethke would he include only a new his friends, Duncan, Creeley, Dorn, would there be orthodoxy? I was greatly satisfied when he announced, "modern is how far any of us room sense in this has gotten." He meant, of course, modern in the in its sense Itwas of contemporary, etymological of "right now." clearly essence another form of "you, this instant, in action," which is the of It was "Human Universe" and indeed of Olson's entire philosophy. so on was an probably then he drew hard his Camel that there left inch of ash, or tucked his tie into his shirt so it wouldn't interfere, or tied sweater or at nose a or his around his waist, swiped his like boxer, or meant wagged his eyebrows, any of the characteristic gestures that we were we were going forward, that making the advance.

24 NOTES

1 See Robert N. Wilson, "The American Poet: A Role Investigation," Ph.D. diss., Harvard, 1952; also his "The Poet and the Projective Test,"Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 16 (March 1958), 319-27.

2 Kimberly W. Benston, "Amiri Baraka: An Interview," Boundary 2, 6 (Winter 1978), p. 307.

is 3 Boundary 2, 1 (Fall 1972), 98-133. Also valuable Richard E. Palmer, "Postmodernity and Hermeneutics," Boundary 2, 5 (Winter 1977), 363-93. Since was a Mazzaro this paper first prepared, critical survey by Jerome has been published under the title Postmodern American Poetry (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980)?only it deals exclusively with Auden, Jarrell, Roethke, Ignatow, Berryman, Plath, and Bishop, surpris is in one is ingly enough (Olson mentioned the preface)?until realizes the author accepting, term in note as accurate Randall Jarrell's application of the (discussed below) and complete. " 4 Michael 'Postmodernismus': Ein ?berblick," Amerikas K?hler, begriffsgeschichtlicher " 20 tudien, (1977), 8-18; and Gerhard Hoffmann, Alfred Hornung, and R?diger Kunow, 'Mod as ern,' 'Postmodern' and 'Contemporary' Criteria for the Analysis of 20th Century Literature," ibid., 19-46.

term in a 5 Randall Jarrell actually used the review of Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle, "From in Nation on 18 1947. used the Kingdom of Necessity," first published the January He term in its to the accurately, intentions, but he applied it only the surface patternings of Lowell; was no sense a anti-westernism or at or there of sweeping de-rationalism root, of the primordial as a ones. on value replacing those previously dominant He used "post-modern" only the lesser not to scale of then-immediate literary history and describe the radical consciousness-change (along with considerable stylistic changes) that Olson and contemporaries Duncan, Creeley, writes: is Snyder, O'Hara, and Ginsberg proposed and embodied. Jarrell "Mr. Lowell's poetry a unique fusion of modernist and traditional poetry, and there exist side by side in it certain one it is a or anti effects that would have thought mutually exclusive; but essentially post- as is certain to modernist poetry, and such be influential" (Poetry and the Age, New York: Knopf, But in as 1953, p. 216). Olson's poetry, the "mutually exclusive" (or Olson would prefer it, using Blakean terms, the "contraries") triumph. Still, Jarrell's essay, which also includes such terms as vs. is in "open" "closed" verse, fascinating this light, offering possibilities for exploring the entire vs. at subject of modernism postmodernism, and should be explored greater length. use term John Berryman reaffirmed Jarrell's of the the following year in "Waiting for the a curt End, Boys," Partisan Review, 15 (February 1948), 254-67?which, incidentally, includes dismissal of Robert Duncan's Heavenly City Earthly City.

6 Boundary 2, 2 (Fall 1973/Winter 1974), p. 7.

7 In to addition the pieces already cited, including Special View of History, pp. 25 and 47, there are at to ca. mentions in least another letter Creeley from 20 October 1951 and in the is unpublished essay from 1952, "The Methodology the Form."

8 A I: Arnold J. Toynbee, Study of History, vol. abridgement of vols. I-VI by D. C. Somervell (London: Geoffrey Cumberledge, Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 39. K?hler picked up the suggestion from Harry Levin's essay, "What Was Modernism?" in Refractions (New York: we Oxford, 1966), p. 277: "Today live in what has been categorized?by whom but Arnold Toynbee??as the Post-Modern Period."

25 9 in notes to in his "Draft of a Quoted my Additional Prose, p. 83. Similarly, plan for the no. writes: is not College" from 1956, OLSON, 2 (Fall 1974), p. 51, Olson "It yet gauged how much nature 1875. so one can the of knowledge has changed since It has changed much that or or as as call man's present knowledge non-Socratic non-Aristotelian non-Platonic decisively as any scientist today speaks of the universe non-Euclidean."

10 In "Human Universe," Human Universe, p. 12; the unpublished essay "History" from 1952; in Olson's 1954 review of the German cultural historian Ernst Robert Curtius, Human Universe, pp. 155 and 157; and in "On History," Muthologos, I, 15.

11 See I pp. 13-14 of vol. of the unabridged Study of History (London: Oxford, 1934)?although the term does not occur not occur in text "Post-Modern" itself there and will the unabridged until vol. in seen it in VIII, published 1954, further lessening the chance of Olson's having Toynbee.

notes 12 In the poet's from 1953, "1st Draft of Possibilities for THE INSTITUTE OF THE SCIENCES OF in 83. MAN," quoted Additional Prose, p.

no. 13 O/so?, 2 (Fall 1974), p. 54.

as one is 14 Earlier, Olson had included psychology of the "New Sciences." The Institute as described in the Black Mountain College Bulletin, 10 (November 1952), p. 18, follows: "Four sciences will be to concentration: central the Archeology, Culture-Morphology, Psychology and is to Mythology. The presentation of the Institute designed demonstrate that these sciences, and are a the disciplines which modify them, unit."

15 New 1972. See Sciences York: Dutton, especially pp. 341-43 there. Olson's principal New of Man since in no. lectures along with related materials have been published Olson, 10 (Fall 1978).

C. on a 16 G.Jung and C. Ker?nyi, Essays Science ofMuthology: The Myth of the Divine Child and trans. theMysteries of Eleusis, R. F. C. Hull (New York: Pantheon, 1949).

17 See J. A. K. Thomson, The Art of the Logos (London: Allen & Unwin, 1935), pp. 17-19, 237, and Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: n. Cambridge University Press, 1927), p. 328 and

at 18 Maximus, least, believes in them. See Maximus II, 199: "wealth (money) is buried/in the in I to come hole the earth/and all had do/was scratch with my fingers/and the little people me out/& passed $1.37 worth of change/whenever I wanted it."

19 In Albert Letters at Gould Glover, "Charles Olson: for Origin" (Ph.D. diss., SUNY Buffalo, 1968), pp. 263-64.

20 What I See in theMaximus Poems (Ventura, Calif, and Worcester, Eng.: Migrant, 1960), p. 7.

21 to See my Guide theMaximus Poems of Charles Olson (Berkeley: University of California Press, as 1978), pp. 609 and 720. Also p. 68 there, for the identification of Paul Blackburn figuring in Maximus I, 68.

26 22 as a Identifiable San Francisco poet named Mary Sirchuk, whose poem "Freedom for a in no. an issue Woman," Olson had read City Lights Journal, 3 (1966), pp. 141-45, which also included his "Song of Ullikummi."

23 An into Articulate Energy: Enquiry the Syntax of English Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958), p. 68.

24 the had been as now to Previously speaker Odin, speaking Odin, he speaks Odin (Odin who sacrificed "himself to one himself," of the profundities of Old Norse exegesis?see Havamal, One also in out the own 138). wonders, looking window, the double windows aligned with his whether Olson also sees a reflection of eyeglasses, himself, snow-streaked, adding still another of and the in the of plane meaning placing poem long tradition mirror-images.

25 "I said of Melville that his is that he man as in importance comprehended mythological an archeological present" ("Beginning of 3rd Institute," February 1953, and ci. Human Universe, This and all p. 115). quotation others from unpublished writings by Charles Olson among his in the of Connecticut are papers Literary Archives, University Library, published by permission of the Portions of Olson's letters are Library. quoted by permission o? the Estate of Charles Olson.