It’s
surprising at times with how reading a collection of poems, or even one poem or
its title, will take you on a search for understanding that brings you back to
where you began. That’s what happened with These
Intricacies.
With
me, it was the title that first captured my attention. The collection contains
no title poem. The title does come from a poem, “Blood
From the Stone” by George Oppen
(1908-1984), the leading proponent of the Objectivist school of poetry, popular in the 1920s and
1930s. Objectivism “emphasized simplicity and clarity over formal structure and
rhyme,” according to the Poetry Foundation.
Both
a poet and editor, Oppen worked with Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams,
among others. In the 1950s, he was caught up in the Red Scare of the 1950s (he
had been a member of the communist party), and fled to Mexico rather than go to
prison. When he returned, “Blood from the Stone” was the first poem he wrote,
the reference in which became the title of Harrity’s collection of poems.
To
continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak
Poetry.
Photograph: Poet Dave Harrity, author of These
Intricacies.
No comments:
Post a Comment