Scan barcode
kazimir's review against another edition
3.0
I can imagine Olson, in gloom on Watch House Point, looking at his polis. I can see the intent from which the poems spring forth and in this I feel a sense of kinship with O. What started me on the poems was the line: “To build out of sound the walls of the city”. Only trouble is, it turns out to be a city one gets lost in quite often. And I get the feeling Olson was lost too. Even if he would have disliked it, the comparison with Pound is inevitable and the Maximus pomes simply don’t hold up. Where Olson rambles on a whole page, Pound would condense to the utmost and get with it. And that’s why he is the superior poet. There is in the Maximus this general feeling of haphazardness, of pell mell, as if you’re reading a draft. And
the conversational, prosy tone does not help. Maybe it is a question of sensibility: Olson is a brash sailor, Pound - a sabre-wielding cavalier. And yet! Olson CAN be a superb poet. It is such a great delight when after a couple of pages of dross you get a line like polis is/eyes. Such sharp lines seem to be a specialty of his and when they do appear, the Maximus becomes exhilarating. People recognise it immediately as these poems, say the one that begins I come back to the geography of it or the one about learning the simplest things last, seem to be the most popular ones.
I marked my favourite lines in the reading notes.
the conversational, prosy tone does not help. Maybe it is a question of sensibility: Olson is a brash sailor, Pound - a sabre-wielding cavalier. And yet! Olson CAN be a superb poet. It is such a great delight when after a couple of pages of dross you get a line like polis is/eyes. Such sharp lines seem to be a specialty of his and when they do appear, the Maximus becomes exhilarating. People recognise it immediately as these poems, say the one that begins I come back to the geography of it or the one about learning the simplest things last, seem to be the most popular ones.
I marked my favourite lines in the reading notes.
More...