New Collected Poems - Hardcover

Oppen, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811214885 ISBN 13: 9780811214889

Publisher: New Directions, 2002

Synopsis

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Poems brings together all of the great Objectivist poet's published work, together with a selection of his previously unpublished poems.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published in books during his lifetime (1908-84), as well as previously uncollected poems and also a selection of his unpublished work.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.

About this title

About the Author

George Oppen was born in Rochester, New York. His first book of poems, Discrete Series, was published in 1934 by The Objectivist Press, after which he stopped writing poetry for nearly twenty-five years in favor of political activism, even living as an exile in Mexico in the 1950s, during the McCarthy era. New Directions subsequently published The Materials (1962), This in Which (1965), Of Being Numerous (1968), and Collected Poems (1975), which also included Seascape: Needle's Eye (1972) and Myth of the Blaze (1975). His last book, Primitive, was brought out by Black Sparrow Press in 1978. All are included here.

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

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0811214885
• ISBN 13: 9780811214889
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Davidson Michael