THE MAXIMUS POEMS by Charles Olson

Jargon/Corinth, 1960 ,First edition, Unpaginated, 8 1/4" X 11 1/2", Hardcover Fine in very good++ DJ Olson began work on his opus, The Maximus Poems, in the mid-1940s, and continued to expand and revise them until his death in 1970. Formally similar to Ezra Pound's Cantos, the Maximus poems are, in Olson's words, "about a person and a place." The person, Maximus, represents Olson's alter ego, and is named after the second-century Maximus of Tyre, as well as a fourth-century Phoenician mystic, and may also refer to Olson's impressive stature (he was six feet seven inches tall). The place is Gloucester, Massachusetts, or more accurately, the small town communal American life that Olson struggled to preserve. Taking up local issues such as preserving the wetlands and documenting the history of fishermen in the Northeast, Olson's poems are widely read as political, but like the Cantos, they also contain deeply lyrical and personal passages as well. The Maximus Poems are divided into three