Just a moment to praise David Antin's talk on George Oppen last night at the
SF State Poetry Center's annual Oppen Lecture. T'was a beauty with David
making his 'tell-tale" circumventions in and out of Oppen's work into the
contemporary & back to the originating circumstances of George's life &
work. Not, what's the word 'hagiographic', platter/patter of praise. Hardly.
Hard on George's penchant for writing lyrics - using Mary Oppen as muse and
pulse-point - for avoiding contact with the details/conflicts/challenges of
their actual lives. Yet, in praise of the work, the chiseled craft of a
Oppen's work with words - much in the way of his trade as a carpenter - the
look for ways to make things fit, a metaphysician in search of 'truth' -
struggling to take the 'dis' out of discomfiture, the quest, even if
unlikely, to 'true-up the joints.' The voice of an aristocrat who never
confused his relationship, involvement and dedication to issues of labor,
power and politics as a false "I am one of you" identification. Though he
worked as a laborer, Oppen as an "outsider" within.
I don't want to falsely reduce a talk with much more complexity. Antin the
younger by 15 years, as well as a long time friend. The way Oppen always
appeared elder by years to any us! & Antin posing Oppen's attentions as a
foil to the present. Where does one, a poet, make language occur in a
political sense when it's of no unique use to make a poem of outrage at,
say, the Iraq war. That's too obvious. Again, Antin in a wonderful aside
about the toxicity of words, such as, for example, the word "rendition" -
how for so many years it was used to identify a contemporary singer's
revisit to a older song (a standard), and where now 'rendition' has been
made toxic - the 'return' for the accused terrorist = no return home at all,
without over elaborating the obvious.
How Oppen was looking for clean words, 'copper without rust' as he once
dreamed, and woke up to discover the word "Oppen" in "copper.'
In a time where the 'toxic' appears to define the centrality of the globe's
political, etc. climate, Antin's talk was a clarifying, human treat.
Eventually the Poetry Center's Archives will have this all on tape.
Stephen Vincent
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
|