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hmidk's review
1.0
Almost gave this 2 stars because of it being Oppen, and the parts of his writing I enjoy that remain intact (mainly through hard silences, his medial caesuras in lines of even just a few words, other long standing elements of his style) but I didn't, because were it not Oppen, I would never have read anything past the first 2 poems. It sounds like someone offering grand astrological, new age wisdom that is ultimately void and uninspired to boot. Example:
The Tongues
of appearance
speak in the
journey immense
journey there is loss in denying
that force the moments the years
even of death lost
in denying
that force the words
out of that whirlwind his
and not his strange
words surround him
The only lines (lines, not poems) I truly liked were these from "Gold on Oak Leaves":
in the sea fellow
me feminine
winds as you pass
The overlapping ideas created by the enjambment that make the reader have to reorient automatically in order to even keep reading are very good and startling, creating that double-think double-take effect (sea as a fellow (as in friend,) fellow meaning 'same-as' connecting the sea and the speaker, "fellow / me" as the speaker themselves, "me feminine" as another description of the speaker, all piled on top of each other -- before even combining all these combinations with all the possibilities of the final line) which is what I really like about his writing is mostly excised in this book for writing similar to the poem quoted above. Though, even in THAT poem, he does his declaration-negation thing I like so much ("his / and not his") but ultimately it just makes me want to go read "Route" and the whole of Of Being Numerous again.
The Tongues
of appearance
speak in the
journey immense
journey there is loss in denying
that force the moments the years
even of death lost
in denying
that force the words
out of that whirlwind his
and not his strange
words surround him
The only lines (lines, not poems) I truly liked were these from "Gold on Oak Leaves":
in the sea fellow
me feminine
winds as you pass
The overlapping ideas created by the enjambment that make the reader have to reorient automatically in order to even keep reading are very good and startling, creating that double-think double-take effect (sea as a fellow (as in friend,) fellow meaning 'same-as' connecting the sea and the speaker, "fellow / me" as the speaker themselves, "me feminine" as another description of the speaker, all piled on top of each other -- before even combining all these combinations with all the possibilities of the final line) which is what I really like about his writing is mostly excised in this book for writing similar to the poem quoted above. Though, even in THAT poem, he does his declaration-negation thing I like so much ("his / and not his") but ultimately it just makes me want to go read "Route" and the whole of Of Being Numerous again.
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