Dennis Tedlock

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 poetics.

Popol Vuh, the Quiché Mayan book of creation, is not only the most important text in the native languages of the Americas, it is also an extraordinary document of the human imagination. It begins with the deeds of Mayan gods in the darkness of a primeval sea and ends with the radiant splendor of the Mayan lords who founded the Quiché kingdom in the Guatemalan highlands. Originally written in Mayan hieroglyphs, it was transcribed into the Roman alphabet...