George Oppen's Vision — The David M. Katz Poetry Blog

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One of the uses of the past is that it can provide a means for living in the present. “So many years ago,” two lovers experienced a revelation, George Oppen’s narrator tells us in his visionary poem, “The Forms of Love.”

George Oppen (Photo by Richard Friedman 1981 Berkeley, CA)

Likewise, in a moment of rising emotional intimacy, the two start to journey “Together” from the past, which assumes the form of “that ancient car.” (The word “together” is repeated a few lines later and serves to emphasize the closeness of the lovers.) The jalopy is a form of love, affectionately remembered.

The speaker then recalls “Standing in the white grass” beside the car. He’s standing to the side of the ancient past, not quite out of its range. Yet he’s also someplace new, in a place of transformation: The normally green grass has become strangely white beneath the moon, which is itself a sign of change. The white grass, the moon, and, of course, the lovemaking are all forms of love.

Although the poem recounts the action in the past tense, the couple tentatively moves downhill into the uncertainty of the present moment. The past, after all, is complete, and the future is a concept yet to be lived through.

That present-tense moment is suddenly (within the course of a linebreak) illuminated by “the bright/Incredible light.” In turn, the couple finds themselves “Beginning to wonder”—to speculate about what’s to come, yes, but also to start to experience “wonder” in the sense of awe.

The ensuing vision is presented with awe-inspiring clarity by Oppen. For me, the poem’s central image is indelible: a sea of whiteness, illuminated by the moon but so obscured by fog that it’s almost impossible to distinguish between whitened grass and water. The scene shimmers in an eternal now.

In his poem “Route,” Oppen wrote

Clarity, clarity, surely clarity is the most beautiful
thing in the world,
A limited, limiting clarity

I have not and never did have any motive of poetry
But to achieve clarity

Despite the “limited and limiting clarity” he intended to achieve, George Oppen formed a revelation of reality bordering on the limitless. Here’s “The Forms of Love”:

The Forms of Love

By George Oppen

Parked in the fields
All night
So many years ago,
We saw
A lake beside us
When the moon rose.
I remember

Leaving that ancient car
Together. I remember
Standing in the white grass
Beside it. We groped
Our way together
Downhill in the bright
Incredible light

Beginning to wonder
Whether it could be lake
Or fog
We saw, our heads
Ringing under the stars we walked
To where it would have wet our feet
Had it been water