The Olson Codex

the long version

This exploration of the influence of Mayan hieroglyphics on the poet Charles Olson (1910-1970) is an important document in the history of American literature. Olson spent six months in the Yucatán in 1951 studying Mayan culture and language, an interlude that has been largely overlooked by students of his work. Like Olson and Robert Creeley, Olson's disciple who published Olson's letters from Mexico, the poet Dennis Tedlock taught at the Univeristy of Buffalo. Unlike his two predecessors, Tedlock was also a scholar of Mayan language and culture, renowned for his translations from indigenous American languages, notably the Popul Vuh, the Mayan creation story. In The Olson Codex Tedlock describes and examines Olson's efforts to decipher Mayan hieroglyphics, giving Olson's work in Mexico the place it deserves within twentieth-century poetry and politics. -- from book flap.