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New Collected Poems
By George Oppen
Edited by Michael Davidson

A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK

Copyright © 2002 Linda Oppen.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-8112-1488-5

List of Illustrations...............................................viPreface by Eliot Weinberger........................................viiIntroduction by Michael Davidson..................................xiiiA Note on the Text..............................................xxxviiAcknowledgments..................................................xliiiDiscrete Series (1934)...............................................1The Materials (1962)................................................37This in Which (1965)................................................91Of Being Numerous (1968)...........................................161Seascape: Needle's Eye (1972)......................................209Myth of the Blaze (1972-1975)......................................235Primitive (1978)...................................................263Uncollected Published Poems........................................289Selected Unpublished Poems.........................................311Notes..............................................................353Index of Titles and First Lines....................................423

Chapter One

The knowledge not of sorrow, you were
    saying, but of boredom
Is?aside from reading speaking
    smoking?
Of what, Maude Blessingbourne it was,
    wished to know when, having risen,
"approached the window as if to see
    what really was going on";
And saw rain falling, in the distance
    more slowly,
The road clear from her past the window-glass?
Of the world, weather-swept, with which
    one shares the century.

1

White. From the
Under arm of T

The red globe.

Up
Down. Round
Shiny fixed
Alternatives

From the quiet

Stone floor ...

2

    Thus
Hides the

Parts?the prudery
Of Frigidaire, of
Soda-jerking?

Thus

Above the

Plane of lunch, of wives
Removes itself
(As soda-jerking from
the private act

Of
Cracking eggs);

big-Business

The evening, water in a glass
Thru which our car runs on a higher road.

Over what has the air frozen?

Nothing can equal in polish and obscured
    origin that dark instrument
A car
       (Which.
Ease; the hand on the sword-hilt

Her ankles are watches
(Her arm-pits are causeways for water)

When she steps
She walks on a sphere

Walks on the carpet, dressing.
Brushing her hair

Her movement accustomed, abstracted,
Declares this morning a woman's
"My hair, scalp.?"

1

The three wide
Funnels raked aft, and the masts slanted

               the
Deck-hand slung in a bosun's chair
Works on this 20th century chic and
               efficiency
Not evident at "The Sailor's Rest."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from New Collected Poems by George Oppen. Copyright © 2002 by Linda Oppen. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.