Status Updates From The Maximus Poems

Maximus sprawls. (That's a good thing.) I'm finally getting the hang of it though. Huge amounts of research. It's like getting a lesson in the history of the West.

Slow going due to a lot of contextualization research on names, places and documents used by Olson to craft the poetry.

Sprawling … onerous … can’t imagine finishing it really … it will always be in a state of being read.

The mole poem is BEAUTIFUL

Said Mrs Tarantino,
occupying the yellow house
on fort constructed like
a blockhouse house said
You have a long nose, meaning
you stick it into every other person's
business, do you not? And I couldn't
say anything
but that I
do

I have this sense,

that I am one

with my skin

Plus this—plus this:

that forever the geography

which leans in

on me I compell

backwards I compell Gloucester

to yield, to

change

Polis

is this

One ne doit aux morts nothing
else than
la vérité

I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties.

Eyes,
& polis,
fishermen,
& poets
or in every human head I've known is
busy
both:
the attention, and
the care
however much each of us
chooses our own
kin and
concentration

The polis is
eyes
…
so few
have the polis
in their eye