George Oppen

George 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.

Sourced

• 'O city ladies'
  Your coats wrapped,
  Your hips a possession
  Your shoes arched
  Your walk is sharp
  Your breasts
       Pertain to lingerie
  • from "Discrete Series", 1934; New Collected Poems, New Directions, 2002, ISBN 0-811-21488-5

• And we saw the seed,
  The minuscule Sequoia seed
  In the museum by the tremendous slab
  Of the tree. And imagined the seed
  In soil and the growth quickened
  So that we saw the seed reach out, forcing
  Earth thru itself into bark, wood, the green
  Needles of a redwood until the tree
  Stood in the room without soil—
  How much of the earth's
  Crust has lived
  The seed’s violence!
  The shock is metaphysical.
  • "Return" st. 2, 1962; New Collected Poems, New Directions, 2002, ISBN 0-811-21488-5

• The steel worker on the girder
  Learned not to look down, and does his work
  And there are words we have learned
  Not to look at,
  Not to look for substance
  Below them. But we are on the verge
  Of vertigo.
  • "The Building of the Skyscraper" st. 1, 1965; Collected Poems of George Oppen", New Directions, 1976, ISBN 0-811-20615-7

• They have lost the metaphysical sense
  Of the future, they feel themselves
  The end of a chain
  Of lives, single lives
  And we know that lives
  Are single
  And cannot defend
  The metaphysic
  On which rest
  The boundaries
  Of our distances.
  • from "Of Being Numerous" #26, 1968; New Collected Poems, New Directions, 2002, ISBN 0-811-21488-5