Stated in its simplest form, Olson's Projective Verse theory has three main principles. The first is that a poem must be a high "energy discharge" from the poet to the reader. Second, the form of a poem is an extension of its content. And third, "ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION." Olson's essay "Projective Verse" originally appeared in 1950; by 1960 the Projective Verse theory was widely acclaimed as the dominant new concept, and it had great prestige through the sixties and seventies. However, many objections to Projective Verse have been raised. Certainly it was not as new as its supporters claimed, but a patchwork of Pound's and Williams's ideas, as has been convincingly demonstrated by Marjorie Perloff [see CLC, Vol. 9]. The trouble with this theory is that it remained a manifesto, rather than a progenitor of engaged, practical criticism that aided the actual writing of poetry. Projective Verse's effect, despite its wide popularity, was introspective, the breath of each poet being the sole criterion for the length and meter of his poetry, rather than projective, the effect on readers determining the form of the poem. (p. 28)

The most crucial question we must ask about the Projective Verse theory is, did it help Olson to write his own poetry?… "Projective Verse" was written before Olson wrote the bulk of his poetry. The first principle Olson states is "the kinetics of the thing. A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it (he will have several causations), by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader. Okay. Then the poem itself must, at all points, be a high energy-construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge." But energy is what is so conspicuously lacking from Olson's major work, the voluminous Maximus poems. Here the "field of the poem" frequently becomes a Massachusetts cranberry bog: a morass of quaint olde ships' logs, provincial topography, miscellaneous mythology, inventories and unimaginative trivia into which the reader's attention soon sinks without a ripple.

This composition method of Olson's reflects his second principle: "FORM IS NEVER MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT." Although Olson cites Robert Creeley as his source, this idea is a reversion to the ancient Aristotelian concept that the form of a work of art should imitate its subject. Olson takes it to the extreme of saying that in a poem "the line comes (I swear it) from the breath, from the breathing of the man who writes, at the moment that he writes, and thus is, it is here that, the daily work, the WORK, gets in, for only he, the man who writes, can declare, at every moment, the line its metric and its ending—where its breathing, shall come to, termination." The man who writes becomes the content of his poem: "For man is himself an object" related to nature but "breath is man's special qualification as an animal. Sound is a dimension he has extended. Language is one of his proudest acts." If the line endings in Olson's poems are meant to indicate breath stops, then the breathing is often arbitrary and asthmatic.

Olson's third principle of Projective Verse is: "ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION." But Olson will often repeat the same perception in his own poetry. For example, a 1956 poem, "The Lordly and Isolate Satyrs," begins engagingly. The calm of a beach is disturbed when satyrs / boddisatvahs / a motorcycle club ride in and halt between the viewers / poet and the sea: "—we did not notice them until they were already creating / the beach we had not known was there—…." This is an exciting perception but, instead of leading on to other perceptions, Olson repeats it four more times. The same image of the satyrs is repeated in line 86, "boddisatvah" recurs in line 73 and 105, Easter Island is invoked in line 12 and again in line 65 and echoed in the "Great / Stones" of lines 31-32. Other needless repetitions mar Olson's vision of the bikers metamorphosing into satyrs, boddisatvahs (Sanskrit: "one enlightened in essence"), and freckled adolescents, then back into transforming demi-gods. Despite its interesting moments, this verbose, repetitive poem is certainly not an example of Olson's exhortation that "in any given poem always, always one perception must must must MOVE, INSTANTER, ON ANOTHER!"

Olson's attempts to eliminate a time sequence often result in poems that lack a dramatic climax. Even in the final book of Maximus poems, when Olson's lyric gifts are most powerful, the climactic images have been rented for the occasion. "This / is the rose is the rose of the World." This image is anticlimactic not only because its phrasing neatly echoes Gertrude Stein, but because it has been used so many times before, most notably by Dante in Cantos XXX and XXXI of Paradiso, where the souls of the blessed form the flaming petals of a white rose. But unlike Dante, Olson has no consistent philosophical structure undergirding his epic. Dante's world view was a highly systematized Christian one, accessible to his readers. Pound's early and middle Cantos rested on a westernized Confucianism. Williams's Paterson intensified to the level of universal myth a single locality and its people. Olson also attempts to do this with his Gloucester, Massachusetts, but his mythologizing is too self-conscious and not coherently integrated.

Olson's view of the poem as energy transferred from the poet to the reader is somewhat similar to the criterion … that a good poem intensifies the reader's awareness. Certainly there are some striking lyric moments in Maximus:

    the mists of the Indians
    on the land, the flow,
    from the ice, of the hidden
    speech, the tales they tell
    of the m'teoulin, of the masques performed
    in the waves, of the Indian watchers making on
    to these other men who have come to the shore
    the fogs the fogs are especially noted you can walk at night
    and read your shadow slanted upward by your side, the tales
    the tales to tell in the continuous speech.

These passages break through the dead weight of Projective Verse theory, the mannerisms borrowed from Williams and the strictures of Pound's style. Olson's individuality became increasingly powerful toward the last Maximus poems, written the year before his death in 1970 at the relatively early age of sixty. If he had been given more time to escape the influence of Pound and Williams, and had accepted more practical criticism from his peers, then Olson's own gifts might have come to more fruition. "I can only cry: Those / who gave you not enough / caused you to settle for / too little."

Olson's most valuable contribution to contemporary poetry was not his own poems, or even his ramshackle theory of Projective Verse, but his gusto and contagious love of poetry. Never, never must we underestimate the absolute necessity of enthusiasm and interchange between poets if poetry is to remain alive. Writing poetry is a lonely, difficult and unappreciated task; publishing a little magazine or a poetry press can be even more discouraging and harder on the pocket. Olson helped to create an open climate in which poetry of a certain sort could be written by anyone, whatever their natural gifts, persistence or learning. (This free-for-all did not mean, however, that everyone wrote good poems—only that more people tried.) (pp. 29-31)