A Halloween Poem: Strange Are The Products

George Oppen, New Collected Poems

A poem written on Halloween in 1976. The poet was living in San Francisco on Polk Street where, four years later, I would be working in a methadone clinic. He is one of my favorite poets. This poem comes from his last book of new poems, Primitive
. It is included in the just-released New Collected Poems of George Oppen
. There is a gorgeously attentive introduction written by Michael Davidson and, in this new edition, a sweet, almost intimate preface by Eliot Weinberger. Best of all-- because I have never heard anyone read poetry in a way that moves me as Oppen's voice moves me-- the book includes a CD of Oppen reading his work. Here is the Halloween poem, below. (I send it out to the young poet Patrick Morrissey, whose impressive work is marked by Oppen, and to Henry Israeli, the editor of Saturnalia Press, for reasons that the poem will make obvious).

Strange Are The Products
    of draftsmanship    zero
that perfect
circle
of distances terrible
path
thru the airs small very
small alien
on the sidewalks thru the long
time of deaths
and anger
of the streets leading
only
to streets brutal pitifully
brutal the swaggering
streets you cannot
know all
my love of you o my dear
friend unafraid
in saturnalia All
hallows Eve more
beautiful most
beautiful found
here saturnalia the poem
of the woman the man our dark
skull bones’ joy in the small
huge dark the
glory of joy in the small
huge dark
  --Polk St., Halloween, Oct. 31, 1976