response 7

Charles Olson's 'Projective Verse' is not only a guide to writing open verse, but also a guide to reading 'In Cold Hell, in Thicket.' As Robert Coover advocates, readers do some of the writing by prescribing meaning to the original writer's work. Olson asks, “ what is the process by which a poet gets in, at all points energy at least the equivalent of the energy which propelled him, which will be...different from the energy which the reader, because he as a third term, will take away?” When I attempted to completely understand the poem, I paused frequently, stunting the poem's kinetic energy. I should have allowed my eyes to ride freely through the poem’s form. When I flowed through the poem, energy flowed through it. The desperation, intensity, and desire to transform into what Senator Joseph McCarthy and other Red Scare perpetrators wanted was illustrated by the form. This form constantly transformed, moved, scattered, and only found a more unified arrangement at the very end.

'In Cold Hell', unlike Ginsberg's 'America', is not directly labeled political. 'America' was written from the perspective of someone addressing America and calling attention to its moral bankruptcy. Olson does not use this technique because his poem depicts the lower class attempting to transform into acceptable Americans. They want to “convert this underbrush, turn this unbidden place” that is America into “the necessary goddess.” Olson poses the question of how targets of xenophobia can rise against the Cold War, conservative hell. He asks, “"How can he change, his question is these black and silvered knivings, these awkwardness? How can he make these blood-points into panels, into side's for a king's?” Olson leaves the question unanswered, but states that this struggle will last forever and the victim will merely, “do, what he now does.”

Olson's form does the same shape shifting that immigrants must do to conform to the American ideal. He follows his own rule which states, “Form is only an extension of content.” By section two of his poem, there a significant change in his spacing method that begins the line "How can he change, his question is, these awkwardnesses?" This form continues, like a man trying to go from awkward to standard. In the third section, form changes again. It reads, "this/is the abstract, this/is the cold doing,this/is the almost impossible." The word "this" is all the way towards the right of the page, forcing the eye to move back to the left afterward. Kinetic energy is released with this movement. Rather than directly defining what the almost impossible is, Olson is saying “this”, as in the words he writes, are the almost impossible. Certainly, the Red Scare's free speech limitations made anti-capitalist poetry “almost impossible.” The poem concludes with the lines, “precise as hell is, precise/as any words, or wagon/can be made.” Notably, these words are arranged precisely in the middle, as if to replicate the aforementioned precision. Prior to these lines, Olson talks of “wavering.” However, Olson reaffirms, through a centered, unwavering form that marks the last lines of the poem that the working class immigrant “will forever waver” and will forever suffer and struggle through xenophobia.