Lumpy pudding
Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and 'bugs' from machinery. (Wimsatt & Beardsley)
Here we celebrate the excluded, lumpy parts of the pudding!
Tarot inspired poem by Charles Olson, first published in Y & X; poems by Charles Olson. drawings by Carrado Cagli. Washington, Black Sun Press, 1950
Olson learned the tarot from Cagli, an Italian artist Olson met in Washington. Several poems from this period are ekphrases of specific tarot cards - “La Torre”, “The Moon Is the Number 18”…
“The Green Man”, which was originally titled “In Praise of the Fool”, is obviously about the Fool card, as Olson comments on in a letter to Frances Boldereff, below. Boldereff had asked if Olson’s Green Man had come out of Blake’s “Jerusalem”…
Olson even wrote a letter to The Western Playing Card Company, suggesting that they publish an American Tarot deck, designed by Olson and Cagli in collaboration. The company declined…
