Charles Olson Reads “Maximus, to Himself”: A Rare 1963 Recording

“I have had to learn the simplest things last.”

Charles Olson (December 27, 1910–January 10, 1970) is one of the most beloved and influential modernist poets. He remains best-known for The Maximus Poems (public library) — a loose exploration of American history and a meditation on the philosophy of place, which he began in 1950 and continued to work on until his death from liver cancer in 1970.

The opening of his poem “Maximus, to himself” is one of my favorite lines in both literary history and the history of thought — so I was beyond delighted to discover this rare 1963 recording of Olson reading the poem himself, courtesy of my alma mater’s PennSound archive — the same treasure trove that gave us Adrienne Rich on love, happiness, and creativity. Enjoy:

Maximus, to himself

I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties.
Even at sea I was slow, to get the hand out, or to cross
a wet deck.

The sea was not, finally, my trade.

But even my trade, at it, I stood estranged
from that which was most familiar. Was delayed,
and not content with the man’s argument
that such postponement
is now the nature of
obedience,

that we are all late

in a slow time,

that we grow up many

And the single

is not easily

known

It could be, though the sharpness (the achiote)
I note in others,
makes more sense
than my own distances. The agilities

they show daily

who do the world’s

businesses

And who do nature’s

as I have no sense

I have done either

I have made dialogues,
have discussed ancient texts,
have thrown what light I could, offered
what pleasures
doceat allows

But the known?

This, I have had to be given,
a life, love, and from one man
the world.

Tokens.

But sitting here

I look out as a wind

and water man, testing

And missing

some proof

I know the quarters
of the weather, where it comes from,
where it goes. But the stem of me,
this I took from their welcome,
or their rejection, of me

And my arrogance

was neither diminished

nor increased,

by the communication

2


It is undone business
I speak of, this morning,
with the sea
stretching out
from my feet

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Adrienne Rich on Creative Process, Love, Loss, and Public vs. Private Happiness

“No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone… The accidents happen.”

We recently lost beloved poet, essayist, feminist, and MacArthur “genius” Adrienne Rich. After last week’s beautiful reading of her 1968 poem “Gabriel,” I revisited the wonderful PennSound archive at the Kelly Writers House, my alma mater, which houses an extensive collection of Rich poetry readings, conversations, and interviews.

Below, I’ve edited several excerpts from a 2005 discussion revealing a rare glimpse of Rich’s creative process and her relationship with art, love, and loss.

Rich adds to history’s finest definitions of art:

One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.

On love and loss as the foundation of all art:

Behind all art is an element of desire. … Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?

On public vs. private happiness:

The question always is there, ‘What kind of a privilege is it just to be able to feel purely and simply happy?’ But we can, and in spite of so much — and in spite of so much knowledge. And, for me, there’s always this issue of private and public happiness.

On her creative process, echoing Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling on where ideas come from:

A poem can come out of something seen, something overheard, listening to music, an article in a newspaper, a book, a combination of all these… There’s a kind of emotional release that I then find in the act of writing the poem. It’s not, ‘I’m now going to sit down and write a poem about this.’

Lastly — because true art is in the doing and not the talking — at a 1985 event at Cornell University, Rich reads from her sublime and sensual Twenty-One Love Poems, found in the fantastic volume The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 (public library):

No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we’re not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.
Tristan und Isolde is scarcely the story,
women at least should know the difference
between love and death. No poison cup,
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder
should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder
not merely played but should have listened to us,
and could instruct those after us:
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces they had ranged against us,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us,
within us and against us, against us and within us.

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Adrienne Rich’s 1968 Poem “Gabriel” Read by Tom O’Bedlam

“I get your message Gabriel / just will you stay looking / straight at me / awhile longer”

This year, we lost celebrated poet, essayist, feminist, and MacArthur “genius” Adrienne Rich. (On my mother’s birthday, no less.)

In this exclusive reading, spoken-verse maestro Tom O’Bedlam — who also gave us Dorianne Laux’s “Antilamentation” and Charles Bukowski’s “so you want to be a writer” — brings to life Rich’s 1968 poem “Gabriel,” part of her Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970 (public library). Enjoy.

There are no angels yet
here comes an angel one
shut-off the dark
side of the moon turning to me
and saying: I am the plumed
serpent the beast
with fangs of fire and a gentle
heart

But he doesn’t say that His message
drenches his body
he’d want to kill me
for using words to name him

I sit in the bare apartment
reading
words stream past me poetry
twentieth-century rivers
disturbed surfaces reflecting clouds
reflecting wrinkled neon
but clogged and mostly
nothing alive left
in their depths

The angel is barely
speaking to me
Once in a horn of light
he stood or someone like him
salutations in gold-leaf
ribboning from his lips
Today again the hair streams
to his shoulders
the eyes reflect something
like a lost country or so I think
but the ribbon has reeled itself
up

He isn’t giving
or taking any shit
We glance miserably
across the room at each other

It’s true there are moments
closer and closer together
when words stick in my throat
‘the art of love’
‘the art of words’

I get your message Gabriel
just will you stay looking
straight at me
awhile longer

Rich’s final collection of poems, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010, was published shortly before her death.

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John Keats’s Porridge: The Favorite Recipes of Beloved Poets

What simple dishes reveal about the complexities of poetry as a creative act of constant transformation.

The relationship between food and literature seems to be an enduring one, from literary parodies of recipes to meals from famous fiction. In late April of 1973, poet and self-taught chef Victoria McCabe decided to formalize the relationship and mailed form letter requests to 250 of the era’s leading poets, asking them to share their favorite recipes. Some 150 replied, 117 of whom made it into John Keats’s Porridge: Favorite Recipes of American Poets (public library) — a tiny yet enormously delightful little cookbook spanning everything from Edward Abbey’s Hardcase Survival Pinto Bean Sludge to Claire McAllister’s Baked Stuffed Sweet Oranges. Only about half a dozen of the recipes were written in verse, at least half “were chosen for their ability to keep a poor poet full for a long time without putting too large a dent in the pocketbook,” and all were tested by McCabe, her husband, and their friends.

Allen Ginsberg offers his uncompromising borsch recipe:

Boil 2 big bunches of chopped beets and beet greens for one hour in two quarts of water with a little salt and a bay leaf, an one cup of sugar as for lemonade. When cooked, add enough lemon to balance the sugar, as for lemonade (4 or 5 lemons or more).

Icy chill; serve with hot boiled potatoes on side and a dollop of sour cream in the middle of red cold beet soup. On side also: spring salad (tomatoes, onions, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers).

Joyce Carol Oates cooks up some disciplined Easter Anise Bread:

1 dozen eggs
1 tablespoon sugar for every egg (¾ cup)
2 cakes yeast
½ cup oil
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon orange juice
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon anise seed
1 pinch salt
9 cups flour
Warm milk, enough to dissolve yeast

Beat eggs; add juices, yeast, and milk an beat slightly. Mix flour, sugar, salt, and anise. Now add to liquid mixture and mix until well blended. Let rise in bowl until nearly double in size. Punch down. Let rise again. Shape into four loaves. Place in greased pans. Let rise and bake for 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Muriel Rukeyser makes an irreverent Omelette Philleo:

On the side of variousness in life, this is my omelette. It is made with all the combining of egg yolks and milk (or, for weight watchers, water) beaten, and egg whites and salt, beaten; the folding, slashing, and then the variation: fill with slices of cranberry sauce for a tart and various omelette. It is named for Philleo Nash, friend, former Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and Cranberry Prince.

I do not mention my pickled watermelon rind with scotch. Nor others.

Ultimately, what John Keats’s Porridge offers, besides the promise of some filling dishes, is an apt metaphor for poetry itself — even creativity at large — as an endless cycle of borrowing, remix, and transformation. As William Cole eloquently puts it in the introduction,

It’s interesting to note that nearly ninety per cent of all the recipes submitted are either the poet’s original recipe or his variation on a standard recipe. Few poets, it would seem, are willing to claim as favorite any old run of the mill standard recipe. This is not surprising when we consider the nature of the Beast: the poet as creator, inventor, who makes out of a few necessary ingredients a magic potion.

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