Tonight I have been searching and searching for an anthology of plays I need for some upcoming work, but it is hiding somewhere among the cardboard boxes that still remain with books in them. Not many but some. My bookcases are full now, and I don't like making piles of books or gawkish improvised bookcases. It's off to the second hand furniture store today/tomorrow.
But of course, as I searched, I did the time-honoured thing: I opened and read some of the books I came across, including The Best American Poetry 2002(Scribner Poetry, 2002), edited by Robert Creeley. Inside I was surprised to find a George Oppen poem. Surprised because he has been dead for awhile - since 1984 - and the poems included were meant to have been published that year. Well, the poem titled 26 Fragments was 'sewn' together by Stephen Cope from notes written on scraps of paper and one note written on the wall. I'm not sure that George Oppen would have liked the way they are used, but Number 4 stood out for me tonight:
In the play, the actors cry out
But in the poem the words
themselves cry out
The poem originally was published in 2002 by Facture magazine.
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