OLYMPIA by Cole W. Williams is an ekphrastic lyric written after the 1977 docudrama Pumping Iron directed by George Butler and Robert Fiore. Pumping Iron features amateur and professional bodybuilders as they prepare for the 1975 Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe contests held in Pretoria, South Africa. Williams uses the footage and minutes in the film to deliver lyrical referencing and musing. This chapbook is a study of a hyper-masculine individual who launched a culture, Arnold Schwartzeneger and his foil in all but body, Lou Ferrigno.

But OLYMPIA is more than just a tracing of the film. It is also the author inserting herself into the conversation in an essay that runs parallel to the text and ruminates on how her own past has shaped the body she fills and her own acceptance and value of that body.

From the Editor:

OLYMPIA is a workout. It is literary calisthenics. It is a practice of dedication, reflection, isolation, reconsideration, reframing, expansion, and editing. Here, the building of a body and the building of a book mirror each other, the evidence reflected in the pages.

The text first came to the Under Review as “The Pump” an ekphrastic piece, a long form fragmented poem based on observations of the 1977 drama doc, Pumping Iron. The work was the winning submission for our 2022 Chapbook Contest. Let me repeat that for those in the back: this was selected for publication in 2022, and it is finally making its public debut three years later.

Listen, a body of work like this doesn’t happen overnight. Just ask Lou Ferrigno. Ask Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ask Cole W. Williams.

Witnessing Cole work and rework this book, this body, has been an intense window into a mind drilled by perfection and motivated by craft. That is a difficult balance. A dedication to craft means being driven to change, to learn, to research, to experiment, to expand, and to edit. That sometimes comes at the cost of perfection. A thing is either a work in progress or perfect. It cannot be both.

But with OLYMPIA, Cole hits on that sweet if not fleeting moment when, like the bodybuilder on the podium, the display of the work in progress is the point. It is universal, human, and specifically for so many women, is the point on which we balance: to show ourselves bare, bone structure unaltered, the impact of our influences, work, desires, are unveiled and compared. Our perfections and imperfections. Where we are swelled, where we are scarred. The life, the living of what makes a body.