Oppen, George - Cid Corman (essay date 1981)

Cid Corman (essay date 1981)

SOURCE: “The Experience of Poetry,” in Paideuma, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring, 1981, pp. 99-103.

[In the following essay, Corman demonstrates how Oppen's placement of words, spaces, and lines in a poem affects the reader's experience of its meaning.]

Rather than “review” the mettle of George's poetry—let me present and draw upon the skill that this man has in using language as experience—as focal experience—in some of his most recent work (in Primitive). Three poems will do—though it would be a mistake to imagine they exhibit all that there is in this jewel of a book.

The first poem in the collection of 13 poems is

“A POLITICAL POEM”

for sometimes over the fields astride
of love?          begin with

nothing or

everything          the nerve

the thread
reverberates

in the unfinished
...

[The entire page is 1852 words long]

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