You misunderstand. If any poems are essential, Maximus is among them. IMHO.The guide is less so--one needn't know what every reference is, and now we have google. …
Maximus evolved over time. But some essentials of the thought-structure holding it together are in the maps at the head of each volume. The program, to exaggerate like crazy, is put forth in "Maximus, from Dogtown--I."
I think a perfectly good and by no means reactionary case could be made out (I’m not going to make it out) that modernism destroyed the possibility of poetical narrative by means of exclusive expanded lyric not necessarily mystified, , and then wanted to write great whopping long poems encompassing humanity’s fate, and found it had thrown away the means of doing this. Stevens magnificently, held back from the temptation. Maximus & Cantos didn't stand a chance of cohering, the thought-process was an inflation of obsession, crackpot missionary rants on behalf of orderly governance and self-elevation. Both poems proceeded as diaries, to which things were added day by day until the poet died and they stopped. Diaries speak principally to the self that wrote them.
These two short paragraphs are my Christmas present to all and sundry . If not wanted please return to S. Claus Esq., North Pole.
PR