OLSON, Charles. The Maximus Poems 1-10 [and] 11-22.

OLSON, Charles. The Maximus Poems 1-10 [and] 11-22. Stuttgart: Jonathan Williams, Jargon. 1953, 1956.

4to. Two volumes; card wrappers with calligraphic design to front panel; pp. I: [viii], 46, [2]; II: [vi], 51, [3]; introduction by Robert Creeley loosely laid in to Vol. I, as issued; a few nicks, minor creasing, marginal adhesive residue to edges of Vol. II, both volumes with, at the back, the stamp of poet and doctor Gael Turnbull’s Worcester (UK) based Migrant Press 1950s, a key connection during the 1950s and 60s, as publisher and distributor, between American and British poets; a very good, sound and clean set.

First printings of the first instalments of Olson’s monumental Maximus Poems; Vol. I (1-10) limited to 300 copies, Vol. II (11-22) to 350 copies.

“The modulation of a man's attentions, [t]hey are truth because their form is that issue of what is out there, and what part of it can come into a man's own body. That much is not sentimental, nor can anything be sentimental if we make it that engagement. […] At some point reached by us, sooner or later, there is no longer much else but ourselves, in the place given us. To make that present, and actual for other men, as not an embarrassment, but love” (from Robert Creeley’s introduction).

Olson began writing The Maximus Poems in the mid-1940s, expanding and revising them until his death in 1970. Comparable in scope and ambition to Pound’s Cantos, Olson described the work as being "about a person and a place”. The person, Maximus, Olson's alter ego, and is named for the second-century Maximus of Tyre, a fourth-century Phoenician mystic, and perhaps Olson's own six-foot seven-inch stature; the place is Gloucester, Massachusetts.

These beautifully produced volumes of the opening sections were designed and published by Olson's former student at Black Mountain, Jonathan Williams, as part of his Jargon series (no. 7 and 9, respectively). The Maximus Poems / 1-10 appeared in October 1953, followed three years later by / 11-22 with money raised from patrons including Caresse Crosby, Robert Duncan, Robert Motherwell, and M. C. Richards (listed at the rear of Vol. II).

Handsomely printed by Dr. Cantz'sche Druckerei in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, and limited to 300 and 350 copies, respectively, both volumes (with the exception of a revised version of the opening poem) later incorporated in the first larger volume of The Maximus Poems, published in November 1960 by Jargon Books in association with Corinth Books and including seventeen further poems to make a third section.

SKU: 2120142