Before the storm hit, the Wise Woman made me put on my coveralls and take some feed and a salt block into the woods. She’s worried about Tripod, the three-legged deer.
We watched him for hours Sunday morning. When deer eat, they sometimes nibble. But they sometimes tear into the grass, and then
The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
That image is from George Oppen’s “Psalm.” Oppen, like Charles Reznikoff, is usually considered one of the Objectivist poets.
I should have thought about Oppen when I saw that magnificent buck in the woods. But I thought of Oppen when Michael Leddy, who writes at Orange Crate Art, reminded me of him, one more bit of evidence that our minds — the collection of thinking that we think we do — is more collective than we realize.
I admire the sharp images you can find in of those lines. And I admire the Objectivists for looking for those images.
Does such poetry change your life? Well, instead of thinking about the burden of lugging corn and sunflower seeds through heavy brush, I noticed that the path that Tripod and his kin had made had been trodden — but also nibbled. It was just as Oppen said as he followed
their paths
Nibbled thru the fields… .
Poetry makes a small difference in the way I see the world. A tiny difference maybe, but still a difference.
• Source: I’m still looking for a book that includes a section of George Oppen’s poems, which I hope was not lost in the move. You can find “Psalm” here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/29449/psalm-56d212ff620c5
No comments:
Post a Comment