[New-Poetry] Olson

[David Bircumshaw]

my reservations about this, Cris, are those of a certain generality of its
language, I think too that formally it is very weak, I quite deliberately
put my reaction poem in the style of a versical palimpest, I know Olson's
wasa divided haphazardly into bits, but to be honest I wanted to take the
piss out of that gesture at form.

Best

Dave


----- Original Message -----
From: "Cris" <cc at opus0.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 3:51 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Olson


> Beginning when Hal posted the link to _Projective Verse_ and I read
> it (for the first time), rekindling my interest in Olson's project,
> another light turned on over the dark map of poetry, I took the UC
> Berkeley edition of Maximus down from my shelf and READ as we drove
> from San Miguel (sorry I missed you Hal-- are you there yet?) through
> Guadalajara to Tepic, Mazatlan, beaches at Guaymas, Hermosillo,
> through Nogales to Nogales and across the very hottest part of the
> journey, Arizona, arriving last night in Santa Barbara, after a day
> in Del Mar where I looked for the link to Enyalion, found these very
> interesting notes on Olson and the Ancient [
> http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/olson/blog/NOTES%20ON%20CHARLES%20OLSON
> %20AND%20THE%20ARCHAIC.pdf
> ]   just this morning completed _The Maximus Poems_.  Much to admire
> and learn from, especially good timing since I've completed my book
> length poem and am EDITING, now with CO in mind.  A sample, in case
> you may not have listened to Maximus for a while:
>
> The hour of evening--supper hour, for my neighbors--quietness
> in the street, and kids gone and the night
> coming to end the day (which has piled itself up
> in shallows, and some
> accomplishment--sweet air of evening promises
> anew life's endlessness, life itself's
> Beauty which all forever so long as there is
> a human race like flowers and, I suppose,
> other animals--they too must know something
> of what it is to love, to be alive, to have
> life, to be on the sweetness of Earth herself,
> great Goddess we take for granted, God the Father so much
> more the strain of our beings, she the sweetness
> we arrive in pursuit of
> --when in such as this
> hour falling suddenly the air suddenly
> the voices of each child now
> distinct, the
> light itself, as the air, suddenly
> separating--disassociation of day, wit
> approaching--love approaching because
> Night accompanies
> Heaven coming
> to love Earth, the ambush
> they the Sons the usurpers
> turned on their
> Father, in the dark knowing
> his habit, to come,
> with Night, to make Love to
> their Mother--& they harmed him,
> Heaven went away that night, Night
> stayed, Earth in fact was a Party to her sons'
> action--these losses
> regained each day when
>
> time brings
> the shortness of
> Day to an end (Night's daughter
> leaves Earth to Night--and Heaven can,
> again, fall in his Desire onto
> Earth.  Except for this interference
> of ourselves, children of this
> long & Eternal sequence of
> Love & Desire, of our own lives'
> scandal in
> the Story
> as those Sons ruined
> their Father and gained Earth or
> Their Right, and divided
> us--as we too divide the
> air of Heaven the mode of
> Love-making which penetrates Earth as
> if now it, earth, the
> ball also solely it is
> as the sun also is, and the moon solely
> planets--stars, three in
> all the heavens' million milliions
> which we can see, at night--all nothing
> but what is, equally--all physica
> if now Earth again has, in her will turned
> to shift her axis and,
> already in a
> 10,000 year readjustment of
> her magnetic field, we'll--
> or so Bruce Heezen speculates that
> then (5000 years from now, mid-point, or double
> Platonic month--two, as
>
> there's been two since
> Indo-European man came
> from the Caucasus onto
> the Plains--a
> like Time--he brought
> these versions of the animate
> nature of Creation, of
> ourselves)--if in 4000 years we'll
> lose because the sun's
> Gamma--Edda gone to
> Gamma--
> will pour through the enveloping
> Atmosphere--Heaven the Father of Us
> not the stars, not the Universe, solely
> this extended skin of our own
>   composite body--miracle of
> form will
> break--broken into, spoiled in
> nature and by Universe, dogged down by
> rays--Lord, Father, correct Earth and
> Love as
> at this hour, each day, in our mercy
> of being your Child
> in the Paternity of only
> Aether, love us and
> keep us in Your
> Receptacle of
> Which You Are The
> Source--and Night the
> Sweetness of the
> Intercourse of which
> We Are the Separable,
> & tentative Eternal creatures,
> Men,
> and Women, simulacrum of the
>
> Story, semblable of
> You
> --of which Life is not
> solely Ours not
> Everywhere
> not all
> here on Earth
> & in these
> troubled
> stories
> of our Selves, of our
> Parents and their repeated
> occurrence
> Each Turn of Earth
> Before Our Own Eyes
> Each Day She
> Turns Her Back on
> Sun, And Night
> brings Heaven
> to Her to
> Begin Again, Love
> And Man Shall Continue To Be in the Mystica of
> This One System Flying
> Loose in the melee of the
> Universe
> And the Perfect Bowl
> of the Sky of Gloucester
> in which these Events
> May be Seen
> Each Evening Hour
> Each Day before
> Night comes
> to cover Heaven's
> approach, to make Love to
>
> Earth
> And bear Us
> as our Ancestors were
> So Borne
>
> -- Charles Olson
>
>
>
>
>
>
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