"the present American poetic diction of brevity"

I enjoyed one of those moments, just a moment ago. I was browsing, looking for a short prose piece by my favorite poet, George Oppen. Thomas Devaney reproduced for his blog, creatively titled Thomas Devaney: Poet and Critic (very NPF Person & Poet Series), a newly discovered letter from Oppen to Buddhadev Bose, dated February 19, 1962, reproduced, annotated, and discussed here by Pat Clifford in the Jacket 36 2008 feature dedicated to Oppen's centenary.


What a boring and important world is the world of pain-staked attribution, and, in large part, that is what Oppen's letter to the Bengali author is about -- whose version of this formed the foundation for that, and whose translation of this is best in that application, and whose permission for all of it must be given and by whom received (and when?) -- such are publishing concerns.*

Rewriting exact translations, what Clifford calls transcreation, is tricky business.

In the middle of it all, you read this:

New Directions has agreed to print a collection of my work. I am very anxious to include the 'To Memory' as it appeared in San Francisco Review, and a poem derived from your 'Still Life' which is a still freer version. It contains only the line 'What are you, apple' as a direct quote from your work. Your form, since it has expressed it, is surely 'good' form: it is simply not mine. My alteration is not meant as an attempt to 'correct' your work, but only to assimilate it to the present American poetic diction of brevity: to make the experiment of the American voice and tone expressing these concepts which I believe no American could form for himself.

The prose piece I have been looking for is, largely, about a Frenchman who carefully drives his bike into a tree, carefully committing suicide. It is a war poem, and about family, and about burning, focussed intention, as well. It is a poem against forgetting.

But this letter fragment will do nicely.

*The inferred content of the letters from Oppen to Bose, 1961-1964:

Oppen wrote at least at least five letters to Bose. The first letters deal with publishing concerns: Oppen submitting poems for Bose’s Kavita, Bose seeking to have work included in the San Francisco Review. In another, Oppen requested permission to use Bose’s poems “To Memory” and “Still Life” in The Materials. Other letters concern a memorable visit by Bose’s daughter Damayanti Basu Singh to the Oppens’ apartment in New York.

Of course, as soon as I uploaded this piece, I found what I originally wanted tonight, which turns out to be Section 5 of Route. It tells of the dilemma faced by Alsatian men during World War II, when they faced the possibility of being drafted into the German army. Some went into hiding, living in holes, which came to be known as faire un trou, and some lived in those holes for years. The Germans took revenge by killing his parents, pimping his wife, stealing his children.

There was an escape from that dilemma, as, in a way, there always is. Pierre told me of a man who, receiving the notification that he was to report to the German army, called a celebration and farewell at this home. Nothing was said at that party that was not jovial. They drank and sang. At the proper time, the host got his bicycle and waved good-bye. The house stood at the top of a hill and, still waving and calling farewells, he rode with great energy and as fast as he could down the hill, and, at the bottom, drove into a tree.

It must be hard to do. Probably easier in an automobile. There is, in an automobile, a considerable time during which you cannot change your mind. Riding a bicycle, since in those woods it is impossible that the tree should be a redwood, it must be necessary to continue aiming at the tree right up to the moment of impact. Undoubtedly difficult to do. And, of course, the children had no father. Thereafter.

There have been maintes opportunities lately for me to embrace the PennSound Project. One of those is its author page for Oppen.