Key to Olson's Maximus
Time, Space and Polis
By: Charles Giuliano - Sep 08, 2016
Key To Olson’s Maximus
From the beginning
August, 2014
Now three books
Working on
Gloucester Poems
Nugents of Rockport
My consigliore
Robert Henriquez
Connected to
Language poets
Particularly
Charles Olson
We took on Maximus
Another riff
Like winters of jazz
Satchmo to Miles and Ornette
The other night
Dinner on the deck
Discussed the key
Its geography
Unique sense of place
From anecdote to
Challenge and change
What it is to be an
American in Gloucester
A complex of occasions
From now back to the Greeks
When they stopped battle
Did that mean Troy
Horse as gift
Belly bursting with
Odysseus the crafty
Warriors ravaging
Leading to the Odyssey
Those other epic poems
Virgil’s The Aeneid
Olson’s poem ending with
Polis is this
His declaration
Time and place
All of it coursing
Through him
Gloucester as an
American epic
Too oblique for
Most to understand
Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 (Withheld)
Spelling it out
Astonished to hear it
Deconstructed fragment
Like a Pound Canto
Willie “Loco” Alexander’s CD
Ripping through me
Arma virumque cano
Ode to Cape Ann
God as Cod