The Maximus Poems

A dense and careful exploration of Gloucester, this collection documents a time and culture now barely known, and participates in a conversation over history and another way of life. With various forms and voices, Olson's experimental text is as much history as poetry, particularly as pertaining to the lives of New England fishermen in America's beginning decades. This is not an easy read, but it's a treasure for readers interested in the early history of New England and/or in experimental verse.

Not for every reader, but certainly for some: challenging, worthwhile, and strangely intoxicating once it's begun.

On the fading edge of the possibility of the epic poem. Only a great loneliness for the specificity of another distinct human being can keep one tethered to these pages for a continuous reading of the book. And that seems to happen less often nowadays. But this extraordinary project is worth the time and effort if, by chance, you happen to have them available.

I know this is an important book, but I can't seem to get Charles Olson as hard as I try. I will continue to try.

The Maximus poems will do as they do and I will read them all one day but not now. But I have to read Heroditus and know something about Tyre and also the deep history of Virginia and Boston and the kinds of salt to keep fish and what exactly a shoal feels like and if Adam Smith really was a poet, if he was cured of his skin's burns and "meubles" and Thucidides and furthermore Orontes, which C.O. calls a "congested poem." You see all of this plus stuff is to be mine upon reading and reading my C.O.

o macho poet of gloucester

i will follow you anywhere

you big meanie