What do you think?
Rate this book
The Collected Poems of George Oppen
First published in 1975, and available now as a New Directions Paperbook, George Oppen's Collected Poems brings together the work of one of our foremost contemporary poets, winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize. A member of the Objectivist school that flourished in the 1930s (which also included William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff, Carl Rakosi, and Louis Zukofsky), he was hailed by Ezra Pound as "a serious craftsman, a sensibility which is not every man's sensibility and which has not been got out of any other man's books." Contained in the present volume are Oppen's late poems, Myth of the Blaze (1972-1975), as well as all of Discrete Series (1934), The Materials (1962), This in Which (1965), Of Being Numerous (1968), and Seascape: Needle’s Eye (1972).
263 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1972
14 people are currently reading
897 people want to read
About the author
George Oppen
23 books57 followersGeorge Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism, and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He returned to poetry—and to the United States—in 1958, and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 9, 2014
I would not have read this book of poetry had I not read poet Robert Hass's essay on Oppen's art (What Light Can Do). In his discussion, Hass writes: "[W]hat happens with the nouns in George Oppen's poetry, it seems to me, is that you can actually watch, as the words are laid down on the page, the process from which the perception of the thing gets born into its numinous quality as a word, an abstraction out of the thing." And not having read Oppen's work, but having Hass's examples before me, I purchased a brittle yellowed copy of the "Collected Poems" for one dollar.
With poetry books, I always expect to be moved by a few poems, while mentally shrugging at the rest (kind of like the old way of buying an album or CD for two song singles that you just HAD to have). I don't know if Robert Hass's appreciation colored my reading, but I loved nearly all Oppen's poems in this - including the ones that I could not clearly understand. I found them extremely beautiful. Emotional. Images to savor. I liked watching the nouns emerge.
The poems travel everywhere: Palos Verdes (California), "Mayan Ground," Hudson River, New York, San Francisco, Europe.
A sample image from "Workman":
Leaving the house each dawn I see the hawk
Flagrant over the driveway. In his claws
That dot, that comma
Is the broken animal: the dangling small beast knows
The burden that he is: he has touched
The Hawk's drab feathers.....
I'll end with Hass's words: "Once you become aware of the sentence as an activity of perception, you become aware of it as an activity of consciousness. In George's poems we experience poetry as the activity of consciousness itself. And the effect is great purity. His work seems pure in the way that bird flight can seem pure, or the running of children or the habit of patient attention to detail in the elderly."
With poetry books, I always expect to be moved by a few poems, while mentally shrugging at the rest (kind of like the old way of buying an album or CD for two song singles that you just HAD to have). I don't know if Robert Hass's appreciation colored my reading, but I loved nearly all Oppen's poems in this - including the ones that I could not clearly understand. I found them extremely beautiful. Emotional. Images to savor. I liked watching the nouns emerge.
The poems travel everywhere: Palos Verdes (California), "Mayan Ground," Hudson River, New York, San Francisco, Europe.
A sample image from "Workman":
Leaving the house each dawn I see the hawk
Flagrant over the driveway. In his claws
That dot, that comma
Is the broken animal: the dangling small beast knows
The burden that he is: he has touched
The Hawk's drab feathers.....
I'll end with Hass's words: "Once you become aware of the sentence as an activity of perception, you become aware of it as an activity of consciousness. In George's poems we experience poetry as the activity of consciousness itself. And the effect is great purity. His work seems pure in the way that bird flight can seem pure, or the running of children or the habit of patient attention to detail in the elderly."
September 17, 2011
At his peak, Oppen took the seriousness of the questions left over from WWII and reminded us that life remained, and we were not above it: "Who Shall Doubt consciousness/in itself/of itself carrying/'the principle of the actual' being/actual/itself nevertheless/neither/the power/of the self nor the racing car nor the lilly/is sweet but this" ("Who Shall Doubt...").
In his introduction to Oppen's Selected Poems (New Directions, 2003), poet Robert Creeley writes about the Objectivist Group: "However different they were later to find their lives—particularly so in the instance of Oppen and Zukofsky—all worked from the premise that poetry is a function of perception, 'of the act of perception,' as Oppen emphasizes in his one defining essay, "The Mind's Own Place." Oppen's complex 'thinking with his poems' is a consistent and major factor in all his surviving work." Creeley continues: "I think much becomes clear, in fact, if one recognizes that George Oppen is trying all his life to think the world, not only to find or to enter it, or to gain a place in it"but to realize it, to figure it, to have it literally in mind."
A member of the Objectivist school, Oppen concerned himself with the question, as Dick Allen of Antioch Review stated, "How can the poet communicate a realization of the concrete object as object without drawing the reader's attention to the way in which he communicates?"
Oppen once commented that he was "really concerned with the substantive, with the subject of the sentence, with what we are talking about, and not rushing over the subject matter in order to make a comment about it."
I think that's enough!
In his introduction to Oppen's Selected Poems (New Directions, 2003), poet Robert Creeley writes about the Objectivist Group: "However different they were later to find their lives—particularly so in the instance of Oppen and Zukofsky—all worked from the premise that poetry is a function of perception, 'of the act of perception,' as Oppen emphasizes in his one defining essay, "The Mind's Own Place." Oppen's complex 'thinking with his poems' is a consistent and major factor in all his surviving work." Creeley continues: "I think much becomes clear, in fact, if one recognizes that George Oppen is trying all his life to think the world, not only to find or to enter it, or to gain a place in it"but to realize it, to figure it, to have it literally in mind."
A member of the Objectivist school, Oppen concerned himself with the question, as Dick Allen of Antioch Review stated, "How can the poet communicate a realization of the concrete object as object without drawing the reader's attention to the way in which he communicates?"
Oppen once commented that he was "really concerned with the substantive, with the subject of the sentence, with what we are talking about, and not rushing over the subject matter in order to make a comment about it."
I think that's enough!
August 8, 2017
I've read a good amount of poetry, and I've rarely encountered a guy I've immediately felt such an intuitive liking for as Oppen. The only poet I can really compare him to in terms of his felt quality is ee cummings, who he reminds me of in more than one way.
For some good examples of his stuff, read "Image of the Engine" or, if you're a parent and want your lip to quiver, "Sara in Her Father's Arms."
He has interesting things to say morally and historically as well as, of course, aesthetically.
Read this man.
For some good examples of his stuff, read "Image of the Engine" or, if you're a parent and want your lip to quiver, "Sara in Her Father's Arms."
He has interesting things to say morally and historically as well as, of course, aesthetically.
Read this man.
Want to read
October 25, 2010Should have stolen Peter's copy but I gave it back. Going to track one down and finish and keep it around.
March 16, 2017
Another unique poetic voice. Influenced by notions of the pure peceiver and Imagism, Oppen is a must read for any working poet.
July 7, 2025
Любопытнейшее ответвление от У. К. Уильямса. Чудесно, во многом.
Read
May 20, 2025Endlessly shimmering & strange…. Great companion to Daybooks 🤍
"survival's/ Thin, thin radiance" (51)
"After these years/ I write again/ Naturally, about your face" (53)
"The bulk of it/ In air/ Is what they wanted" (56)
"Truth also is the pursuit of it:/ Like happiness, and it will not stand./ Even the verse begins to eat away/ In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit;" (68)
"The little hole in the eye/Williams called it, the little hole/ Has exposed us naked/ To the world/ And will not close./ Blankly the world/ Looks in/ And we compose/ Colors/And the sense/Of home/And there are those/In it so violent/And so alone/They cannot rest" (81)
"That was the first world war/ Half a century ago--my sister/ Had a ribbon in her hair" (129)
“It is the business of the poet/ ‘to suffer the things of the world/ And to speak them and himself out’” (131)
“Clinging to its rocks from which kelp/ Grows, grass/ And the small trees/ Above the tide line/ And its lighthouse/ Showing its whitewash in the daylight/ In which things explain each other,/ Not themselves” (134)
“The self is no mystery, the mystery is/ That there is something for us to stand on./ We want to be here./ The act of being, the act of being/ More than oneself” (143)
“Insane, the insane fly/ Which, over the city/ Is the bright light of shipwreck” (160)
“Clarity, clarity, surely clarity is the most beautiful/ thing in the world,/ A limited, limiting clarity/ I have not and never did have any motive of poetry/ but to achieve clarity” (185)
"The sea anemone dreamed of something, filtering the sea/ water thru its body" (186)
"Power ruptures at a thousand holes/Leaking the ancient air in,/ The paraphernalia of a culture/ On the gantries/And the grease of the engine itself/At the extremes of reality/Which was not what we wanted/ The heart uselessly opens/To 3 words, which is too little" (200)
“Knowledge is/ loneliness turning and turning” (250)
"survival's/ Thin, thin radiance" (51)
"After these years/ I write again/ Naturally, about your face" (53)
"The bulk of it/ In air/ Is what they wanted" (56)
"Truth also is the pursuit of it:/ Like happiness, and it will not stand./ Even the verse begins to eat away/ In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit;" (68)
"The little hole in the eye/Williams called it, the little hole/ Has exposed us naked/ To the world/ And will not close./ Blankly the world/ Looks in/ And we compose/ Colors/And the sense/Of home/And there are those/In it so violent/And so alone/They cannot rest" (81)
"That was the first world war/ Half a century ago--my sister/ Had a ribbon in her hair" (129)
“It is the business of the poet/ ‘to suffer the things of the world/ And to speak them and himself out’” (131)
“Clinging to its rocks from which kelp/ Grows, grass/ And the small trees/ Above the tide line/ And its lighthouse/ Showing its whitewash in the daylight/ In which things explain each other,/ Not themselves” (134)
“The self is no mystery, the mystery is/ That there is something for us to stand on./ We want to be here./ The act of being, the act of being/ More than oneself” (143)
“Insane, the insane fly/ Which, over the city/ Is the bright light of shipwreck” (160)
“Clarity, clarity, surely clarity is the most beautiful/ thing in the world,/ A limited, limiting clarity/ I have not and never did have any motive of poetry/ but to achieve clarity” (185)
"The sea anemone dreamed of something, filtering the sea/ water thru its body" (186)
"Power ruptures at a thousand holes/Leaking the ancient air in,/ The paraphernalia of a culture/ On the gantries/And the grease of the engine itself/At the extremes of reality/Which was not what we wanted/ The heart uselessly opens/To 3 words, which is too little" (200)
“Knowledge is/ loneliness turning and turning” (250)
June 28, 2007
It's impossible to put into words how I feel about the work of George Oppen, and about this book in particular. There's been very little written critically about Oppen, either for good or bad, and that's probably a good thing. The work speaks for itself, and speaks to anyone who has any interest in the particulars of life and the world around them, much less in poetry. If I could only keep 2 or 3 books out of the many that I own, this would be one of them.
July 21, 2007
The new collected is clearly superior, with the proper formating of Discrete Series alone making it worth the purchase price, but I'll always have a soft spot for my old, dog-eared, marked up ND paperback.
June 29, 2007
another one that i keep near me like someone else might keep a bible
July 23, 2007
There's a warmth to Oppen's fragments that's simply beautiful. "Of Being Numerous" is a poem beyond catagories. It's everyone's.
May 19, 2010
Fantastic. In my opinion, some of the best American poetry of the twentieth century.
May 3, 2011
Basically transformed how I consider the role of language for poets.
August 11, 2016
one of my favorite books of Poetry. plus it is on New Directions. i love the design & everything about this book.
May 9, 2016
Some good poems, but has a poem called "the Zulu girl" where he talks only about breasts, despicable.
Read
December 17, 2007A terrific poet.
August 25, 2008
"Of Being Numerous" is incredible
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews