I guess pretty much everything makes sense. I mean, if you read Olson's poems in New American Writing 29, you'd think the world was pretty much made out of sense. And if you were a speaker in those poems, that's the main thing you'd have going for you. Don't get bothered by all the chaotic details that might make things confusing. It's part of the logic. You'll be familiar with it soon enough. In one poem, there's even an "Avatar of Chaos." But, don't worry. He's actually employed by "us." He's our gardener. And he can plant almost anything: thoughts, knowledge, feelings. He can even wrestle his words so they'll have meaning for us.
Maybe there is something magical about these poems, because I am absolutely incapable of worrying while I'm around them. This gardener, or "Avatar of Chaos," is full of violence towards us. He plants knowledge of knives. He plants feelings in the speaker's heart that blossom into hammers. Am I supposed to be disturbed? Honestly, that would be the most ridiculous reaction of all. Because a good garden is bumbling and chaotic and turgid and plentiful. You might try planning a garden, but I think the true pleasure comes when you happen upon the garden's will. And this is what Olson's poem excites in me. The continually regenerative potential in nature. Olson writes like there is no end to what might spring into being. "Why do we hire this guy?" the speaker of the poem asks. "Because he can make anything grow. / Because he is ancient as earth."
Olson has three poems in this issue of the magazine, each of them fecund and overflowed. It is the true definition of poetic largesse.
Recommended links:
A statement he makes about his writing
Larynx Galaxy
New American Writing
