“I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You:” Applying the Guidelines of the Projective Verse to Shakespeare, Charles Olsen, and Suz Guthmann

Charles Olson, commonly thought to be the founder of the Black Mountain School of Poetry, proposed rules for poetry in his essay, “Projective Verse,” which was published in 1950. He said in the essay, “One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception… get on with it, keep the momentum going.” Olson believed in terminal juncture, a poetry term that asserts every line should end with a pause as an intake of breath. 

This is in contrast to say a Shakespearan sonnet where each line is a complete thought and breaks the stream of narrative. The Shakespearean line is in iambic pentameter; that is to say, ten syllables broken into five iambs or syllable pairs, of which the first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed. For example, the first four lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is below with parenthesis around each iamb or foot, the stressed syllable in bold. 

(Shall I) (compare) (thee to) (a sum)(mer’s day?)

(Thou art) (more love)(ly and) (more tem)(perate🙂

(Rough winds) (do shake) (the dar)(ling buds) (of May,)

(And sum)(mer’s lease) (hath all) (too short) (a date…)

To compare, let us examine the first stanza of Charles Olson’s poem, “I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You,” following two of the guidelines for Olson gives for reading a poem which includes looking for the structuring of lines as breath units instead of looking for the end stops (observe Shakespeare’s punctuation at the end of every line above) and looking for typographical rifts as meaningful hiatuses into which we can read undescribed mental or physical operations. 

Off-shore, by islands hidden in the blood  

                                    jewels & miracles, I, Maximus

                                    a metal hot from boiling water, tell you   

                                    what is a lance, who obeys the figures of   

                                    the present dance

Visually, “Off-shore” is literally out to the left margin. This makes the line an island in the white space, following Olson’s third rule of typography which suggests using a variation of the left-hand margin to register minute changes of pace in thought and vocal delivery. It is also interesting how blood is directly above miracles; in Judeo-Christian tradition, blood and miracles go hand and hand. This can be found in the Jewish Torah with the story of lamb’s blood over a doorway sparing the life of the first born son in the Plagues of Egypt and in the Christian Gospels where Christ creates communion. However, there is a double meaning in that there is no punctuation between blood and jewels, which shows that blood applies to jewels as well as possibly miracles. Blood jewels brings the mind to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in a war zone, also known as conflict diamonds. 

Moving through the second line, Olson begats the narrator of the poem, Maximus. Here he applies the first rule of typography by “equating the use of space with units of silence in the oral delivery of the poem. There is no comma, which seems to make Maximus a literal metal hot from boiling water, but since Maximus is a man, it seems to point to Maximus being a literal firebrand or a person who incites change. The line ends with “…tell you” and the next line opens with answering the “What” question posed above, for example: 

a metal hot from boiling water, tell you         (Tell me what?)

what is a lance                                                (Resolution)

This follows the principle put forward by Osborn that each line propels the reader into the next line. This continues with the continuation of four and five which ask the question

what is a lance, who obeys the figure of         (Figure of what?)

the present dance                                             ( I don’t know, who?)

To review, the typography, the style and appearance of written matter, of Projective Verse follows and/or includes these four characteristics: 

1. Equating the units of space with the units of silence in the oral delivery of the poem
2. The use of the oblique or when the poet wants a slight pause but does not want a comma
3. Varying of the left hand margin to register minute changes of pace in thought and vocal delivery
4. The opening and not closing of the parenthesis beginning a temporary digress from topic ends up usurping rather than returning to the original subject 

Let’s try to put these characteristics into practice. 

Why does peace go