May 5, 1963
Dear Charles Tomlinson:
‘Happy that company who are intoxicated with each other’s speech; who, through the fermentation of thought, are each other’s wine.’
Sa’ib of Isfahan, the translation by Edward Browne. Or; ‘our language is our country’ I’m not sure of the accuracy of that quotation.
I hadn’t thought the Discrete Series ‘bad,’ but I do think the poems require the help, the very great good will of the reader. Which you generously supply. I had meant to carry the thinking and the form of these poems as far as I could without abandoning the figures of perception for the figures of elocution, or even of mere assertion, which I profoundly distrusted. There seemed at the time a tremendous difficulty of honesty: the whole weight of sincerity seemed to rest on one’s own shoulders. As how should it not? But there was perhaps not a body of honest contemporary work, a sincere and public conversation in which to join. Not, perhaps I should add, that I take truthfulness to be a social virtue. I think very probably it is not. But I think it is poetic: I think really that nothing else is. The sentimentality of an old codger? - - but I was a mere fine broth of a codger at the time.
It’s been pleasant to be invited to talk about oneself - - and to speak with such affection! I see I have rather sneakily accepted praise. But I am reminded, quite against my will, that the poems are, after all, fragmentary and sometimes strained.
As to the ‘Objectivists’ - - the word properly in quotes because the word has caused some confusion: it derived from an insistence on ‘objectification,’ on form, a matter worth mentioning in the wake of the Amy Lowells. Tho’ Zukofsky wrote also of ‘sincerity’ as the ‘epic quality.’
As you suggest, no one’s work altered, so far as I know, after the word was coined. It appeared in - - I think three - - essays that Zukofsky wrote. And of course those are simply Zukofsky’s essays. I must have owed more to Zuk. than either Williams or Rezi could have: both Rezi and Wms being older than Zuk and I younger. I had seen Zuk’s work in Exiles in, I think, 1928 - - being nineteen or twenty at the time - - and had set out to meet him. His conversation and criticism was important to me, was of great importance to me at the time. I don’t remember therefore that the essays themselves came as anything new to me.
I noticed that Williams, in the autobiography, speaks of the first meeting of the Objectivists in an apartment on Columbia Heights. That would have been our apartment, my wife’s and mine. But what we discussed then was the undertaking to print books. The work of course already existed in ms. and the dust jackets of the books carried the explanation, written at that meeting by Reznikoff, that the ‘objectivist press was an organization of writers who had joined together in order to print their own work and that of others which they thought ought to be read.’ It was about as much as could be said. We were of different backgrounds; led and have led different lives. As you say, we don’t much sound alike. But the common factor is well defined in Zuk’s essay. And surely I envy still Williams’ language, Williams’ radiance; Rezi’s lucidness; and frequently Zukofsky’s line-sense.
Those essays, by the way, are reprinted in Kulchur No 7. I had not seen them for some twenty years. I can’t judge their current interest, having known them so long. And the style is crabbed. But they seem to me sound statements.
An essay of mine, slightly referring to these things, will appear in Kulchur 10, incidently.
Not sure if you wanted all this, but I’ll complete the history. The Objectivist Press derived from To Publishers; paper-bound books printed by my wife and me in Toulon. Printed the Objectivist Anthology - - edited by Zukofsky - - and Williams’ Novelette and Other Prose.
Commercially disastrous. Paper-backs were new to the U S, and encountered trouble with the U S customs and the U S customs - - the men on the pier, and the men in the book stores. Both of whom said they are not books. The book stores simply would not stock them, or most would not. Thereafter that meeting on Columbia Heights, etc.
The poems of The Materials were written between 1958 and 1962. As I believe you surmised. Too long, too personal a story to undertake here: I kept nothing of the little I wrote for some twenty five years. That matter of one’s peers - - I have come to believe again, perhaps in more rather than less despair, that the only possible hope is in the conversation with one’s peers. Or in thinking as if one were in contact with one’s peers.
In England, a couple of years ago, I visited Tim Pember, a writer whose work I had seen - - stories - - and he showed me your work among others. I was struck and delighted. Reason for my promptness in reply to your first letter. I have lost Pember’s address, and I don’t know whether he indicated that you knew each other.
I’m sorry, since you will be in New York, that we will be in Maine in August. Unless toward the end of August - - ? You are welcome in Little Deer Island, in our rented cabin, if you could possibly make it.
With regards
George Oppen
Brook Cottage
May 17, 1964
Whitsun Sunday
Dear George and Mary,
It was good to know that you have arrived home safe after your travels, but sad to realise how far you are from ‘just around the corner.’
The vicar returned today — Sunday — the first call since you were here! We were paganly luxuriating in sun on the lawn. He brought a gift of cream. The church owns glebe land, but the farmer who rents it is often behind with his payments and buys the Rev. Clegg’s good nature with far more cream than four Cleggs combined can stomach.
We attended a performance of Britten’s setting of Noyes Fludde in Cirencester Abbey the other day and joined in the hymns right lustily — the local kids played hand-bells and blew bugles and (as cats, mice, camels etc.) sang Kyrie eleison as they filed aboard and a canonical Alleluia as they disembarked.
… Will the London book trade undertake an Oppen? …
Since you were here we have explored the Roman villa at Chedworth and seen other things that you must NEXT year — another family church, more beautifully kept and decorated, Mary, than Boxwell where we walked. And we (i.e., we and you) MUST see the abbeys.
I took our Amer. friend over to look at the great tile barn at Bradford-on-Avon (5–6 miles from Bath -- another place for NEXT year) and we found the local grammar school performing As You Like Itinside, the whole arranged as at the first performance with a local belle enthroned centrally and dressed as Elizabeth I. I think you wd. have loved this — fanfares and all from the boy trumpeters.
I took just a peek at Louis’ Bottom this p.m. but it’s been a very rear-guard action so far. Ars gratia artis.
I asked J. about those French translations of his verse and he replied by sending them + all his other books: the poems are as gracious as the gift. Why is it the anthologists so consistently ignore him? He has a lovely ear, an immensely clear diction and — yes — the authority of wisdom urged without any of the trappings: family life, the war, the uncertain peace. If this were not a miserable age, J.L. wd. be a popular poet in the best sense.
A very old friend of ours, Justine Schulz, will be in N. York this summer and wd. very much like to meet you. We shared a house with her and Juergen S. in London ten years ago and they now live in Berkeley and I think you would like them.
What a lovely stay that was, your being here!
Love. Ch. B. J2
