Geoffrey G. O'Brien's Metropole

Metropole, by Geoffrey G. O'Brien
(University of California Press, 2011) 

Could be there be a difference between a commitment to writing and a commitment to language? And I don't mean commitment in that dictionary-detached "commitment" form of the word. Every writer is "committed" to language, and attending to the process of language, and writing to discover something new, etc. I mean commitment where you're a little too intimate with the writing or language, like you're in a co-dependent relationship with one of the two. Because that is at the heart of Geoffrey G. O'Brien's Metropole. He is in one of those intensely intimate co-dependent relationships with either writing or language, and I'm not sure I can decide which one it is. 

Is it writing? He's making constant references to himself as a writer. Not The Writer. Not The Author of These Poems Who's Going To Observe Himself Writing To Cue Up the Turn of the Poem. God bless Philip Levine and Larry Levis and every poem from the 1990s that pulled that move with such dexterity that a whole new generation of poets fell in love with poetry. Or I did at least. But I grow weary of its more contemporary examples. I'm suspicious when The Poet feels the need to Intercede. But this isn't O'Brien's move. There's no need to be suspicious of Metropole. Because his gesture is not so much about being The Poet, but a poet. And his poems read like a poet who is just trying to understand why the world is here and there was language made to think "the world is here" and "why." A poet like O'Brien is with and within language while he's writing. It's like they're good friends who have the sincere regard for one another. And they treat each other with little gifts. Little realizations. And, like every co-dependent relationship, maybe they know a little too much about each other. In "Three Years" or "Poem with No Good Lines," O'Brien indulges his friend Writing. He lets Writing say whatever it wants, so maybe that's a problem, because Writing is more about impulse and what might follow from that impulse. And if you indulge impulse too much you might make it tough for meaning to sneak through. 

But Metropole is never a meaningless book. And so I say, "O'Brien, you are in a co-dependent relationship with language." There should be no doubt how in love with language he is. The words, the syntax, the grammar. I would say many poems are parts of the world that were just waiting for language to step in on their scene and give them language-existence. Like the colors of a flower box after they've been cleared for October. What is that color? Read "The Sutterlin Method." Did you need language for that sense of absence (or "vacancy") you might feel at the beginning of autumn? Read "Ecstatic Norm." O'Brien does that thing for Language that you do for a lover. He gives it new treats. He gives Language a little kick to its step. 

All this to say, we should probably let O'Brien and language have a little privacy. Let them "get down" on their own time, if you know what I mean. But where does that fit the reader? I'd like to think that reading is kind of a menage a trois, where, in this case, O'Brien, language/writing and me are in these alternating positions that keep building and building into something extraodrinary. In Metropole's case, I'd say it's more a menage a deux, where I was invited to stand at the doorway and peek in. How else should I describe the title poem? "Metropole" feels like Walt Whitman when he's crossing on the Brooklyn Ferry. The language is integrated into the landscape, the society and the enthusiasm of the speaker. Everything in the poem is so fully cognizant, and reading it makes you feel that there would be no good reason to end the poem. But O'Brien's methodology is so much more personal than Whitman's. I feel engulfed, but at a distance. Like I'm getting to witness this very intimate relationship between O'Brien and his language. Where do I fit? 

Of course, this might be the question I should have been asking in all those menage a trois's I've been involving myself with. Is there a good way for the third party to "involve" himself in the scene? Where is it I was fitting with those books anyway?

Recommended Links:
Metropole
A previous blog post where I try to give a reading of O'Brien's Gulf Coast poem.
Poem Beginning to End (from Boston Review)