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    Metropole
    Metropole
    Metropole
    Ebook95 pages1 hour

    Metropole

    By Geoffrey G. O'Brien

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    About this ebook

    Geoffrey G. O’Brien’s third collection opens with a set of lyric experiments whose music and mutable syntax explore the social relations concealed in material things. O’Brien’s poems measure the "vague cadence" of daily life, testing both the value and limits of art in a time of vanishing publics and permanent war. The long title poem, written in a strict iambic prose, charts the disappearance of the poetic into the prosaic, of meter into the mundane, while reactivating the very possibilities it mourns: O’Brien’s prosody invests the prose of things with the intensities of verse. In the charged space of this hybrid form, objects become subjects and sense pivots mid-sentence into song: "The sun revolves around the earth revolves around the sun."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of California Press
    Release dateMar 2, 2011
    ISBN9780520948273
    Metropole
    Author

    Geoffrey G. O'Brien

    Geoffrey G. O’Brien teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley and at San Quentin State Prison. He is the author of Green and Gray and The Guns and Flags Project, both available from University of California Press.

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      Book preview

      Metropole - Geoffrey G. O'Brien

      VAGUE CADENCE

      An away of practice the other is

      Like a river out of acts the other is

      Hapless, unheard, with marks upon him

      Having dallied in tarrying unwisely

      Backlit at an undecidable remove

      In a house of marks the other is

      Useless deciding whether to go

      Or wait in best practices like a child

      A hapless river filled with sand

      For years it flows like unmarked rope

      Years of saying as it moves away

      Are the undecided water others bring

      Like the child of acts the other is

      Saying to himself the other is

      A hapless river practicing its flow

      A house that moves to where one was

      With all years off the water goes

      The lights are on so the dark is out

      Like the useless children others are

      A certain building dream within

      A part of speech without a name

      BOHEMIAN GROVE

      Grab our missing spears and begin

      to think the Bohemian Grove, trees,

      theatricals, songs that hold exquisite

      filterings of sunlight down to the boys

      were women there in the powerful glades,

      in the 20s, there's nothing like it, to have

      loins for the first time running around

      in leaves, in the 70s I sang a song of we

      became ourselves again as women, specifically

      houris, the leaves of love falling

      by chopper and could see the security cordon

      of leaves running around excited to be

      playing a part in the hush of the woods

      Donald called me songbird and to be fit

      for the world one must periodically leave it,

      affectionately, for the age and straightness of trees

      in the 80s, whispering at the clearing's edge

      about how to keep both houses, no one hurt

      when respect is earned by singing a short theme

      in the 40s, at the tree line, theatricals, excited

      to be putting on a helmet and running around

      in the dark, on my knees in the sun

      being told as a group what to do about

      how soft I was, the pillows in my chamber

      with choppers landing and a glow through the trees

      spread uncomfortably around the clearing

      till there's nothing like it, going missing

      and the distance you begin to think, respect

      hushing the woods with a part to play

      blacked out in the secret authority

      of choosing a heavy gold dress to wear

      over on the other side of the clearing

      songs hold the men like houris

      for the first time leaving the world

      affectionately at play in choppers and leaves

      no one is hurt at the edge of themselves

      running from the news of sunlight

      into heavy dresses the warriors wore

      for a production of the 50s, absence of birdsong

      there in the powerful soil.

      POEM BEGINNING TO END

      The trees are men, men strange,

      Strangers come into a house to speak

      Across a table made of trees.

      Waking was fighting at it while

      Looking at a thing you own is

      Sleeping outdoors without knowing why

      The reasons escape, so continuing

      To eat and drink. I think you have to

      In order to be ready, a cup seriously

      Open, ready to talk or gesture with it,

      Show the house has no roof,

      Men are coming in, this is a cup.

      We make a tableau called embarrassment

      At a physical past, the one prepared

      Accordingly your instincts stopped

      Now in admitting daylight

      I was fighting or talking about this

      Feeling taken from a box of scarves,

      Cardboard box from another move

      Marked by faint incursions, games

      So called because all was still

      In play, that table for instance,

      Where a hand is trained to follow

      The eye into goals, this cup

      Moving on its own through the single

      Family dwelling space contracts to,

      Angry from the outset

      That a hand is still involved

      And scene. I went back to sleep

      In the middle of our argument,

      Speech about forgotten labor

      A lamp can sing with its head bent

      Remarks I should anticipate I am

      The shadow objections to, streaming

      Out from the faucet to be cut in half

      By hand. The entire room far off

      Talk content to happen tone

      On tone, the strong illusion,

      And night, deaf as a mural,

      Not made so much as lovingly

      Assembled from memories of those

      Who couldn't get out of the way,

      Now here in the form of a cup

      Alien when brought to bed

      From table and the table not

      Made so much as overturned,

      Evolving from its legs a depth

      Morning is the answer to

      LEFT BEHIND

      To speak of autumn reasonably

      As knowing tasks remain undone

      I forgot the password autumn

      Moving through the empty lots

      Gray gates deserving paint

      Fewer cars on the road, to speak

      Of these cars I forgot autumn had

      Come wasting its credibility

      There was a gray to repaint

      Those rituals for keeping spring

      From happening, I was trying to

      Be evenhanded about why fall

      Held in fidelity to everything is

      How absentminded lyrics put it

      Written that way while cars

      Passed modestly, run-on

      Sentences beginning I can't

      Recall all the things that go here

      Lots empty or not yet

      Doing the holiday errands

      Would be one way to phrase

      A low point autumn deserves

      Credit for or driving towards

      Becomes the shop I forget

      To stop sensibly at autumn

      As in lots of things to do

      Modesty forbids me to mention

      There is a gray gate in

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