Having touted George Oppen in my previous entry, I realized I’d never posted any of his poetry and decided to remedy the omission. Here’s the last poem in his great book Of Being Numerous (I presume the fifth line refers to Swan’s Island, Maine; the poem was originally published in Poetry, December 1967):
BALLAD
Astrolabes and lexicons
Once in the great houses—A poor lobsterman
Met by chance
On Swan’s IslandWhere he was born
We saw the old farmhousePropped and leaning on its hilltop
On that island
Where the ferry runsA poor lobsterman
His teeth were bad
He drove us over that island
In an old carA well-spoken man
Hardly real
As he knew in those rough fieldsLobster pots and their gear
Smelling of saltThe rocks outlived the classicists,
The rocks and the lobstermen’s hutsAnd the sights of the island
The ledges in the rough sea seen from the roadAnd the harbor
And the post officeDifficult to know what one means
—to be serious and to know what one means—An island
Has a public qualityHis wife in the front seat
In a soft dress
Such as poor women wearShe took it that we came—
I don’t know how to say, she said—Not for anything we did, she said,
Mildly, ‘from God’. She saidWhat I like more than anything
Is to visit other islands…
I was listening to a podcast called Close Readings (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/close-readings/id1657024670) and they were discussing this poem, which, when I googled it, steered me to this post! Maybe Google just knows I’m a the Hat all the time…
Thanks very much for visiting this poor neglected post and giving me a chance to reread the poem, fix its line breaks, and update the links (I even got to add one for the Poetry issue, since they’ve kindly put all their back issues online)! Off to listen to the podcast now…