seminar study: george oppen

Boy's Room
by George Oppen

A friend saw the rooms
Of Keats and Shelley
At the lake, and saw 'they were just
Boys' rooms' and was moved

By that. And indeed a poet's room
Is a boy's room
And I suppose that women know it.

Perhaps the unbeautiful banker
Is exciting to a woman, a man
Not a boy gasping
For breath over a girl's body.



There's a kind of quiet beauty in Oppen's work.

I also love Psalm, which you can read and listen to on the Academy of American Poets' website.

Here's also another gift: a talk (or, "poetry course," as it is listed on the webpage) given by Louise Gluck and Michael Braziller titled Our Life in Six Lyrical Poems: George Oppen.