The Daily Glance
Rodney Koeneke's Introducing . . . Doctor Marvelous is filled with energy from page one. "A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it . . . by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to the reader" (Olson's "Projective Verse"). Koeneke brings Olson into the work quite a bit in the end, and Olson's ideas of energy seem right on with this chapbook. At times, these pieces seem like automatic ones since they flow so quickly and contain pop references, yet they are filled with literary allusions: "cittie on a hill," "I want to be absorptive," "The top circle of Hell is for Italians/who speak to the moon in alexandrines," so I suspect that Koeneke took his time in crafting them.
It's tempting to read all of Maximus OneKoeneke pulls history and contemporary events into his work as Olson does, but Koeneke's work has a very different feel. Olson's work is massive and brooding, but Koeneke's work feels like it is taking place in a conversation now, like we are at a table talking instead of listening to the bardic voice over the expanse.
on this clean Saturday with my girlfriend gone
and the late-morning sun just unwrapping itself
from fog. And everything's so bright, dot-
com out here, the back side of Gloucester
the stockbrockers up on seismography
incapable of earthquakes on their own.
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