*Published in EXQUISITE CORPSE No.56 A Festival a beginning: A View of the Charles Olson Festival, Gloucester, Massachusetts, August 12, 1995 halfmoon beach w/dog, woman, father w/child in heated morning, guard sits reading glossy magazine of the month- mammoth stones! small softly breaking waves, feet from one staircase to another Woke near - to eat bread on a lasted, crescent, coincidental beach where Charles Olson, "as a young man berthed/a skiff and scarfed/my legs to get up rocks." Deceptive, steady beach, as the tide rose swiftly with the sun. Families of cookout-goers descended as the temperature rose on what had been empty upon arrival: swimming and gathering in Gloucester, more than ninety degrees temperature, hot. Blue and white painted plywood signs at the entrances to town, signaling our day's events, and a banner of the same hues hanging from the facade of the Sawyer Free Library. The water of Western Harbor cool, to swim in ideal, to float in exquisite. Gloucester in colors, cycles of ten breaths, in the sun before movement, feet splayed on stone, the shade! Celebrating a poet announced by rotary roadsign. Temporary collection of stones and shells, noticing green acorns in aged sand, the arms, corpus of Olson's view July 29, 1961, Ten Pound Island in clear sight. Crossed paths with an excited Chuck Stein, and his friend Megan Hastie, about an hour before proceedings would begin. A buzz about outside the century and a half old City Hall. When a group of 350-400 convened with a panel discussion as fans hummed and whirred in the elegant cavern of the City Council Chamber of City Hall, the charge meant the spirit of Olson alive. All were invited to feel present in a room which matched the grandness of Olson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and others who had held forth in that space before... During the opening remarks and introductory statements for the panel, "Charles Olson Over The Years," David McArdle and moderator Peter Anastas foregrounded Olson's dedication and importance to the city. Hearing the words from Gerrit Lansing's Foreword to an interesting book of Olson's letters, _Maximus To Gloucester: The Letters and Poems of Charles Olson to the Editor of the Gloucester Daily Times 1962-1969_ (Gloucester: Ten Pound Island Book Co., 1992), audience and panel alike were reminded how Olson works with the physical (i.e. geographic, local), historical and social topography of his community, and the deep concerns of what would be a common "man." All of America's cities have been in transition since the Industrial Revolution. Olson pipes up in an era subsequent to the dropping of the atomic bomb, at many points addressing the post-World War II pave-over of his city and country. A throng of late "last first people" sat captivated, sweating, some fanning themselves with programs. There were seven of Olson's friends and associates seated at a table before black and white photographs of Olson's city, beneath a brightly colored mural of early Gloucester which read BUILD NOT FOR TODAY BUT FOR TOMORROW AS WELL (to which Robert Creeley quickly added, "As Yesterday"). Vincent Ferrini, whose 50s literary journal _4 Winds_ introduced some of the Olsonian vortex to each other, brought a candor and personality to the moment which lit the room with experienced life. Clear articulations, reflections and memories of Olson, voiced by Creeley ("he made the world for me"), Ferrini (who Olson once called his "twin"), Ed Sanders (whose concerns with "typos, tropos, and topos" are clearly a continuum of Olson's energy), Hettie Jones (who worked with Olson on texts), Jean Kaiser (Olson's sister-in-law), Ingeboard Lauterstein (a student of Olson's at Black Mountain), and Anastas brought alive, in expression, Projective Verse - "the heart by way of breath to the line," it was put. Curious, unfamiliar attendees were not faced with a high-brow, indecipherable, assumptive poetics jargon. As a method of orientation, the intuitiveness, imperfections, a complete interest in just about anything, and the "multi-century maxim" inherent in Olson's writing, as well as concerns about his sometimes noted "patriarcal" style, were highlighted and brought down lucidly and conversationally from the beginning. While it was, of course, imperfect, the two hour discussion was moving in its movement. Eloquence, and we could hardly believe we were in North America, hearing such a broadly informed discussion about our political climate, the environment, and the work of citizens and writers alive in the world today in a public place, off-campus, with an attentive, eager and interactive audience. The audience, refused to be satisfied with the panel's initial comments on Olson's "polis," which had really only skimmed a surface due to whatever time constraints the spontaneous public-platform seemed to present. Several people in the audience, including Olson's friend the painter Thorpe Feit, who cast Olson as a "Roosevelt Democrat," chimed in on this subject. Testimonials and engagements by various people in the audience added to the scope and breath-exchange of the program. It was a writer's historical and innovative work, of people and place, in discussion, with a significant audience, its main concern being the well-being of a place and people thriving: substance with anecdote, feeling and memory, projected importances. Ed Sanders more than once described the continuous influence which Olson's work has on him as something akin to nuggets or constellations of writing, words which stick in his head with tremendous impact, motivation and beauty. Then there were fresh, wild blueberries from Dogtown, and a fifteen minute documentary film about Olson running on a loop, plus other refreshments available at the subsequent reception at the Sawyer Library, across the street. Everyone, even late arrivals, ate in the city of Gloucester. Further continuing with the spirit of Olson, the audience, which did not appear to have shrunk in size from its earlier meeting, was treated to a fine sounding of Olson's work at an evening reading at City Hall. Recitations by Lansing, Jones, Creeley, and Sanders solidified Olson's concerns and intensity. Lansing read, with the gentlest of diction, from the letters to the _Gloucester Daily Times_. Jones read a memoir poem - to Olson - and from his work which had appeared in the journal Yugen_. Creeley read four sections from _The Maximus Poems_, which appear in _Selected Poems_, a volume Creeley edited of Olson's poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), true arc of song. Sanders' finale gave credence to any belief that he is among the foremost bards of our time. His settings of a melange of _The Maximus Poems_ to music, sweet shrill of voice, self- accompanied by three-string guitar, could not have been matched by anyone. Quite special to hear the echoes of The Fugs song, "I Want To Know," channeling Olson's song to an audience, a city, as a scarlet sky fallen in to darkness we continued to spin. By evening's end it is clear to people the necessity of Olson's post-atomic expansiveness - what are the important prerequisitions for a writer's work, and how projective "pen" can function and fight in the world. If there is evidence of the defeat of beauty, of location, write it down. The open writer can make myth. All nonfictions and fictions in a continual process of being rewritten, while "Vast earth rejoices...." After the events, I went with a half dozen others - from Boston, Buffalo, Europe, and other points - for a near-midnight swim. Returning to Halfmoon, we shed our clothing and dove into the again rising tide. We swam out around the glowing, two day past full moon rocks where I'd earlier watched an iron stay drilled into the rock - for salt boats? - swallowed and eliminated from view by the incoming height of water. We were exchanging our favorite Olsonian word constellations: "That we are only/as we find out what we are," For there is a limit/to what a car/will do," "limits are/what any of us/is inside of," "the illusory is real enough," "...I am one/with my skin," "there are only/eyes in all heads,/to be looked out of," and, with Olson's grandeur on the shoreline, in the air, talking with us, unsurprisingly: "the initiation/of another kind of nation." To this, my friend, who studied at the prestigious university in Cambridge, replied, "That's what it's all about." -Chris Funkhouser, Albany, NY for the Society, & ever-invoked Sappho 14 August, 1995 [ Note: Readers interested in viewing the videotapes of the Festival might contact David McArdle, Director of Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library, Gloucester, MA, 10930, to find out if they are available. ]