Letters to Myself

Letter 3 --

Tansy buttons, tansy
for my city
Tansy for their noses

Tansy for them
tansy for Gloucester to take the smell
of all owners

Tansy
for all of us (MP,13)

He keeps it going, repeating an attractively SOUNDING word. Tansy = aromatic herb, buttonlike yellow flowerheads -- bitter tasting leaves -- sometimes used medicinally --
So the image is UNCONVENTIONAL -- not a rose or daffodail -- but "Tansy". Shakespeare knew his flowers and plants and herbs -- so to Olson. And I thought it was a STUPID made up word.
The Smells must be present in the space. Never a vacuum.

Tansy -- so dense -- that it must resist exploitation:

The word does intimidate. The pay-check does.
But to use either, as cheap men

o tansy city, root city
let them not make you
as the nation is (MP 15)

The "tansy city" resists commercial exploitation, resists becoming a global product. It remains aromatic in its own way, obscure in its use, not chopped and trimmed and fit land exported like ROSES or TULIPS or (one might add) ORCHIDS.

Concluding Letter 3 Olson writes:

Isolated person in Gloucester, Massachusetts, I Maximus, address you
you islands
of men and girls (MP 16)

How apt.