New Collected Poems [Hardcover]

George Oppen (Author), Michael Davidson (Editor, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2002

George Oppen's New Collected Poems brings together all of the great Objectivist poet's published work, together with a selection of his previously unpublished poems. George Oppen's New Collected Poems gathers in one volume all of the poems published in books during his lifetime (1908-84), as well as previously uncollected poems and also a selection of his unpublished work. Oppen, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969, has long been acknowledged as one of America's foremost modernists. A member of the Objectivist group 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 book." Oppen's New Collected Poems (which replaces New Direction's earlier, smaller Collected Poems of 1975) is edited by Michael Davidson of the University of California at San Diego, who also writes an introduction to the poet's life and work and supplies generous notes that will give interested readers an understanding of the background of the individual books as well as references in the poems.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Modernist who was part of the Objectivist group that included Charles Reznikoff, Louis Zukofsky and Carl Rakosi, George Oppen (1908-1984) won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his masterpiece, Of Being Numerous. New Collected Poems gathers that work, along with some missing from the 1975 Collected. Edited by poet Michael Davidson, it includes Primitive (the last volume Oppen published, in 1978) as well as previously unpublished work. Admirers of Oppen's foundational volumes should be very pleased with this update.

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Review

A marvelous gathering of Oppen's...poems. Michael Davidson also must be commended for his instructive introduction. -- Salem Press, Jeff Jensen, 1 February 2003

Admirers of Oppen's foundational volumes should be very pleased with this update. -- Publishers Weekly, 17 December 2001

Cause for major celebration and delight. -- Daniel Kane, Pequod, Fall 2004

Oppen is in the line of our best contemporary poets. -- David Ignatow, The New Leader

Oppen's ways of working, and the poems they produced, show virtues no other poet can match. -- Times Literary Supplement [London], Stephen Burt, 15 April 2005

The sensation of reading George Oppen...is of being propelled into a space on the edge. -- Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Poetry Project Newsletter, December 2004/January 2005

There is enormous human loneliness at the heart of Oppen's scrupulously crafted poems,...devoted to precision, accuracy and clarity. -- Edward Hirsch, Washington Post Book World, 23 November 2003

This volume is an astonishing record of the development... of a poet of great humanity and intelligence. -- The Nation, John Palattella, 25 March 2002

To a degree unmatched by any book of American poetry...movingly portrays the individual in a collective world. -- The New Yorker, 18 March 18 2002

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811214885
• ISBN-13: 978-0811214889
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,357,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Clarity of Compassion, November 26, 2002

By 

Nathan Wirth - See all my reviews

This review is from: New Collected Poems (Hardcover)

This volume constitutes the most complete collection of Oppen's work to date-- many poems of which have not been anthologized until now. The centerpiece of the collection is Oppen's wonderful book-length poem-- Of Being Numerous. This Pulitzer-prize-winning poem is concerned with the dilemma of seeing the world through the eyes of solitude versus seeing the world through the eyes of what it is to be of the numerous. Throughout the poem's forty sections the reader is introduced to the meaning of what it is to be "of being numerous," warned about the shipwreck of isolation, thrust into the madness of war with all of its atrocities, reminded of the limits of language, introduced to clarity, and finally called upon to realize the necessity for compassion. A heartily recommended read!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Objectivist Poems For Further Reading, March 22, 2005

By 

R. DelParto "Rose2" (Virginia Beach, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New Collected Poems (Hardcover)

George Oppen's New Collected Poems is an updated version of Oppens' 1979 Collected Poems. The Pulitzer Prize poet takes the reader through a journey of his life. The poems have a distinct trait, which are based on Oppen's treaded and somewhat nomadic life that he lived along with his wife, Mary. The Introduction of the book offers tidbits of an adventurous and well-travelled man as well as his controversial political leanings with communism and anti-fascism. Despite that fact, Oppen wrote each poem with a sense of time and place, and one may easily identify where he was geographically, New York, Mexico, or California and what he was writing about. In essence, he writes with the world in mind and its many intricacies.

The most distinctive aspect of his poems is his reference to the war experience. As a veteran of World War II, Oppen reflects on the lasting affect the theatre of war had on him as well as the fury of the Cold War during the 1950s. He displays this in poems that are included in The Materials collection. In addition, Oppen offers a storm of socially political poems which may be the capstone of New Collected Poems. Oppen's 40 section, 1969 prize winning book, Of Being Numerous, provides his voice of opposition to the war in Vietnam; the illustrious distinction for his work allowed wider audience to become exposed it. This collection also includes Oppen's last published book, Primitive and unpublished poems. The last portion of the book provides a run down and analysis of each collection.

New Collected Poems offers much to be discussed. However, for every reader that obtains a copy, there will always be a different perspectives to Oppen's work even if you aren't a poetic theorist. Michael Davidson states: "They are often abstract, as mysterious as koans, a sea-surge of contradictory forces: assertions and their negations, declarations couched in double negatives, questions without answers, straightforward observations placed next to gnomic statements whose beauty lingers forever because they are never fully understood" (preface, x). If that may be a handful, this collection of poems may nurture your mind toward other poems and poets.

Nevertheless, Oppen does a find job of meshing together history and literature in his poems, which was an added plus for this reader.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A voice in print and audio, November 30, 2008

By 

Paul A. Baker "communicator" (Madison, Wis., US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: New Collected Poems (with CD) (Paperback)

In this re-edited version of Oppen's 1975 Collected Poems, editor Michael Davidson adds 60 previously unpublished poems, most from the 1950s through the 1970s.

The previously unpublished poems come from Oppen's manuscripts and working papers. Davidson says that, although this edition may include a bit more of the unpolished material than Oppen would have liked, he justifies these inclusions by considering the way Oppen composed; his "tendency to embed poems in the midst of a kind of textual rubble."

So we benefit from Davidson's archaeological digs. He worked to respect the integrity of Oppen's compositional standards by including "poems that he worked on over a period of time, or which elucidate other published poems." Sixty pages of notes provide additional substance and texture to this edition.
In these readings recorded in San Francisco, New York, and London, one hears a voice that is disillusioned, perhaps tired, but committed to grappling with personal and collective experience through art. In fact, Davidson says his editorial decisions were inspired in part by Oppen's remark that poems are forged out of social and familial forces beyond the aesthetic: He was shaped by working as a manual laborer, raising a family, the Depression, the threat of Fascism, and Communist Party activism.