I first read Olson's "The Kingfishers" as a passenger on a car trip from Marfa to Dallas. In the car with me was my first wife, but we were not talking, just driving. I was reading it in the Selected Poems put out by California in 1993. I'd just picked it up before the trip at Half-Priced Books in Dallas. It had that smell of an old poorly-ventilated bookstore, and it had been waiting preciously for me in a car for many long miles. "The Kingfishers" was the third poem in the collection, and it hit me immediately because of Eliot. I'd been reading Eliot's works thinking of the symbolism of the kingfisher, so there it was, the image in Olson's words on the wide open roads near Marfa with the mountains in the distance and the car barreling forward. Olson, the road, Marfa.
When I think of Olson, I think of him unscrewing a bottle in a small Gloucester apartment that is superimposed on a Texas highway among deserted mountains.
When I think of Olson, I think of him unscrewing a bottle in a small Gloucester apartment that is superimposed on a Texas highway among deserted mountains.
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