Oppen, George - Harvey Kail (essay date 1981)
Harvey Kail (essay date 1981)
SOURCE: “A Test of Images: George Oppen's ‘Vulcan,’” in George Oppen, Man and Poet, edited by Burton Hatlan, The National Poetry Foundation, Inc., 1981, pp. 257-64.
[In the following essay, Kail explores Oppen's poem “Vulcan” in an attempt to determine if the validity of Oppen's thought can be established through a study of his imagery.]
I would like to put a poem of George Oppen's to the test, an examination using his own criterion that “a test of images can be a test of whether one's thought is valid, whether one can establish in a series of images, of experiences … whether or not one will consider the concept of humanity to be valid, something that is, or else have to regard it as being simply a word.”1 If I understand this correctly, the test of truth (or at least of “sincerity”) in a poem is its ability to establish for the poet and for the reader a tangible...
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