The problem here is one of scholarship. The complete Maximus Poems , edited by the late George F. Butterick, was published by the University of California Press in 1983. The page size is fine, but the book is so thick it s hard to get into. It s better if they re published in separate volumes. Let me say this.
Projective verse is certainly the most difficult way to write.
We took it as an answer to free verse. Free verse was the end of the line and had become utterly academic. A young poet confronts that and doesn t understand how the ear and energy come out of a lot of rich cultural sources. Williams was impressed with Olson s essay. At the point of which you re speaking, free verse was beginning to become the major way in which poetry was taught in the universities.