The poems that follow offer the insights of an archivist as he considers practical work alongside artistic sentiment. The author, Hans Olson, states that:
these poems … deal with finding what has been missed or has gotten mixed up only to be found again and made anew if broken apart and reassembled. As surrealists were concerned less about making sense than making feeling and disruption, these are about waking dreamscapes and finding personal agency.
AT THE TRANSMITTING EDGE
by Hanz Olson
The humectant, in proportion to a series of misses, mixes in a school
of metallic traces curling up inside a measured bed. Engrossed covers
collect alley drift
in their back pocket. As ink consists of dyes, centuries guide the
speed of drying, the rate of exposure to light, to moisture on the
coated steps of “buses / no buses” *
the likes of which make their “own” visible lines accessible in fluid
formats, in sweeps of iron gall ink made for being met.
*
Bear vs. Shark
Commentary:
Surrealism doesn’t always tell us what something means—it shows us how something feels when it doesn’t quite fit, when it’s been broken apart and reassembled. Archives can feel like that too. They hold pieces of stories, but not always the whole thing—there are gaps, distortions, silences.
So as you listen to these next two poems, you don’t have to resolve the images you hear. You can let them rest as fragments in a collection, in a record group—partial, layered, sometimes contradictory. We are reminded that our voices don’t always come through clearly. Sometimes they arrive sideways as we move forward.
PACING WEST
by Hanz Olson
The red weather dinosaurs falling in love,
their tattered but generative petal-puzzle
this exhibit’s source of energy (not words)
gathering around the gate, ghosting its frame
the way January once did. Dancing on the
storied magazine, the obscure lyric, boxes at home
in archives, in core cyphers wild, curls of smoke
wind their way back up a spat of years.
SMALL DARK HAUNTS OF FIELD
by Hanz Olson
Theme’s a Lamia, sweet but broken
by numeric stones the measure of states
reaching their last glass-bottomed gust
of wind. Hearts outline bellows below
a mountain wrapped in the dust
of its own making. Felt beginnings continue
to move the furniture around in a series of actions
that register a collection-level description.
Consuming their offspring, each branch holds
onto a homebound data interchange standard
snapping sharply in the wind.
Commentary:
As these poems move along, you might start to hear patterns—things repeating, things slipping out of place, things that almost come into focus and then defy doing so. That’s something we see in archives, but also in public life.
Not every voice is preserved the same way. Not every story is recorded, or counted, or recognized. And sometimes what’s missing tells us as much as what’s present.
The next poems lean a little more into that space—where voice begins to gather, to push back, or tries to take shape in systems that don’t always so easily hold it.
MATERIALS (SIDE ONE)
by Hanz Olson
The way color photographs fade in the dark as they do in the sun,
silver and dyes develop out, spread through reactions in a
localization of loss their own.
Chemical instabilities drive to the surface a repackaging of the
component parts. Still they grow, and a glass beak breaks ripples
dropped from the outer banks of this frame.
What fades reeves a line through each redox spot caught
between a dusty base and a clean microscope. Layers push through
abrasions before lending a cohesion to any new avail.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT HAIKU
by Hanz Olson
Birds of western stone,
your silver plates, accustomed
weather weaving sounds
IN A SCATTERLESS SPLENDOR
by Hanz Olson
Inspect before using this file’s
full text, its evolving set
of tools, its chair beside the vase
of pencils, piles of erasers, origami
frogs and boxes. A hunched-over
and quiet readout with the well-postured
owl, the one at grips with a sorting project
on the table, teaches us the original
order of some forgotten feathers.
In this case, studying it means
accessing a place’s operational hum.
The company moving onto well timed
and technical morning stars will call
for us to pause, to lift our hands
in a format that resembles the air,
or the recycled steel of brightly
reassembled words.
In the following poem, we can visit two finding aids, and know about the manuscripts being considered:
PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUES
by Hanz Olson
Representatives of the true bearing of these currents
issue forth now that the first chapter of these manuscripts
has found a corner in the dry membranes of the reading room,
in the discarded but still engaged nose bleeds shaking hands
over the warmth of new openings at dawn. One, two, and three
reaching eight and all open seats. A long, rectangular style
digital frame floats above our hands as they grasp the locked
canisters of film holding up the premier. When the deed
of gift departs with photos Norm chanced to take in this aisle
of a ghost town. remember those other uses still outside
sharing a single stove, their showing made strong by the chill.
By Permission of the Author.
Keeping (and Telling) the Past 