Walk-Out: Rereading George Oppen

Abstract

To be read posthumously It will as a matter of fact happen it is a big fact It is a big fact which will happen for very small reasons. - George Oppen But what kind of poetry do you understand with one reading that you go on using and remembering all your life? I mean poetry that's most important to me is poetry that's been important to me for most of my life. I want to go back to it, and I find new things in it. - Mary Oppen On March 13, 1983 George Oppen walked out of a reading by Edmond Jabes at Fort Mason, San Francisco. question I wish to investigate is why he should have done so. An immediately plausible possibility is health. time of reading Oppen was seventy-three and would die, one year later, of Alzheimer's disease. Rosmarie Waldrop, Jabes' primary English translator and one of presenters at reading, recalls that poet's wife, Mary Oppen, requested they be introduced to Jabes prior to reading for fear he would not be up to entirety of event. I do not deny plausibility of this possibility. Oppen may have been easily tired, may in fact have been dying, but health speculation is no more certain or encompassing than any other speculation. If not health, then what? If not health, then one would have to assume that Jabes' work somehow prompted leave-taking of other poet. Further: that something about work proved to be so disquieting as to be unendurable. My investigation concerns that something. selections for reading were determined by Jabes' presenters, Rosmarie Waldrop and Jerome Rothenberg. They begin with very first pages of Book of Questions, including all of At Threshold of Book, jump to part five of And You Shall Be in Book, continue through parts of The Book of Living to sections from Book of Yukel and Return to Book. reading concludes with Drawn Curtains from first part of latter title. penultimate lines are: ('Death will get better of me. God can only help me in void.' - Reb Zeilin). I was not present at reading. above account is based on a videotape from American Poetry Archives of San Francisco State University. George Oppen's departure is not recorded on videotape. camera remains fixed throughout on Jabes and his presenters. In addition to Waldrop and Rothenberg, there was a third presenter, Michael Palmer, who provided an introduction. Palmer was aware of Oppen's departure but could not give an exact time. Rothenberg was not aware that Oppen had left. Waldrop remembers that Oppens were gone by intermission. question of why walk-out took place is displaced by question of when. When conditions why. My assumption is that Jabes' work somehow prompted other poet's leave-taking, that something about work proved to be so disquieting as to be unendurable. answer to why is conditioned by answer to when. I was not present at reading, and there is no consensus among those facing audience. Whichever moment might be chosen as decisive has to remain speculative. moment I would nonetheless designate as moment occurs almost exactly halfway through reading. moment I would mark with red is at beginning of section three/part two of The Book of Living, which makes up final pages of first volume of Book of Questions. moment of this moment is one line: The light of Israel is a scream to infinite (164). There is possibility that this was beginning of moment which culminates one page later with a statement attributed to Reb Rouel: The Jewish soul is fragile casket of a scream. George Oppen didn't scream, he walked out. He did so at sound of word Israel, at characterization of what that word stands for as an ambivalent spirituality. He did so at sound of phrase the Jewish soul, at characterization of what that phrase stands for as an ambivalent spirituality. …