Augmented Vortices: Objectivism & Imagism, Oppen & H.D.

Discrete Series (1934): In the preface, Pound opened by preempting the charge of obscurity, then acknowledging a cry for originality and a call for reform, and closed with a "salute" to a "serious craftsman." Though vague, this preface intuits a likely response to Oppen's collection: an uncertainty of both the coherence of the 'series' and the sensibility of the 'craft.' The crux of the volume, though, reiterates mathematical and logical exercises of incompleteness, begging the reader to anticipate obliqueness in knowledge as necessary and valid. That is, rather than enforcing a stringent dedication to image as the thing, Oppen's brand of Objectivism (which differed from Zukofsky's) relied upon the value of incompleteness and omission as crucially resonant operators in the poetic object. So as Oppen delivers a poetic experience that emphasizes sincerity and linguistic commitment, he also enacts the vertiginous conundrums of Wittgenstein and Godel. In verifying the gaps and voicing the silences, Oppen allows his poems to be both conversational and muted, obscure and evocative. The open structure of the book, in which some poems are titled, some numbered, others unlabeled, creates a poetic experience that feels experimental and productive: it begins with an inclusion of multiple poetic voices, develops among images and actions, and concludes in a veritable force field of uncertainty, with "Happenings" and "(the telephone)"

Though Oppen and H.D. can easily be contrasted, most obviously using their -ISM definitions, distinctions, and associations, the poems of the 1930s share the exploration of a multivocal poetics that invites ephemeral experience and growth in radiation. Poems like "Magician," "Calypso," and "The Poet" deliver vigorous testaments to H.D.'s ability to marry the animal, visceral voices with those enchanted and melodious, compacting a volatile harmony of friction and fantasy. She dissolves distinctions between subject and object, action and story: all contribute to the sorcery of Song. In the mythic and particular, the collection of solos, these later poems, like Oppen's, offer experiences in series, and they do so by enlivening defiance and argumentation as constructive forces. Louder than Oppen's, it seems, these poems by H.D. showcase the roaring rush of the poetic vortex in which soundtrack accompanies the Imagist's eye.