Why Not

by Joel Oppenheimer

"Spare and understated gems."-- Small Press

46 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1987

About the author

Joel Lester Oppenheimer (Jacob Hammer) (February 18, 1930 – October 11, 1988) was an American poet associated with both the Black Mountain poets and the New York School. He was the first director of the St. Marks Poetry Project (1966–68). Though a poet, Oppenheimer was perhaps better known for his columns in the Village Voice from 1969 to 1984.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanted to know who Joel Oppenheimer was as a writer after running across his name in Kane's All Poets Welcome and How I Became Hettie Jones as the first director of St. Mark's Poetry Project and guy who ran around with Paul Blackburn and generally stood in for the masculine wearing cowboy boots in the lower east side poetics that the other of both of the above books seemed to have a general distaste or disinterest in. Saw a copy of this in used bookstore on Grant St. in Buffalo. Reflects a huge WCW influence but less elusive than WCW at his best. A few poems I enjoyed but this in general didn't do much to complicate the picture I'd already formed in my head of JO. That's that I guess.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I
dear sir i
wld like to see
this poem in
print perhaps we
can do business

II
dear sir enclosed
are a few thoughts
you could think
on these are
average i have
more some better
some worse perhaps
you could start a
series of thoughts

- The Correspondence

* * *

i swear that
this morning
nathaniel said
setting his compass
over the paper
this will be
either a
very large moon
or a small planet

it is
a distinction
i cannot draw
no matter how
i sharpen
my pencils
no matter how
i stretch
and set
my head

- The Lesson

* * *

no matter what book
i use to level
the record player
or i put under
the end of the couch
where the leg is missing
it is always needed

like right this minute
i need the history
of the bugatti and
the lesser works
of gertrude stein

it's always the same

"if you were going
to repair your house
which books would you take?"

do not list
more than eight

- The Word

* * *

my darling
i wanted
to tell you

my darling i
wanted to take
the whole line
of human thought
as we have
understood it
and wrap it
in a ball
so you would
understand it also

to cry
like sappho
about the moon
sunk beneath
the western sea
lying here
on my bed alone

or say
o western wind
when will you blow
so the small rain
down can rain
christ that my love
were in my arms
and i in my bed
again

my darling
i could not
find words
i could not
sing either song

i could not trust
such things now
when we are
too tied in to
where our heads
would like to be

and then
my darling
in the morning paper
i found the words

spoken by a
chimpanzee who's
learned to talk
and who types
pictographs
to record her speech

who is building up
her vocabulary
against the future

at night my darling
every night
alone in her room
she types out sentences

"please machine
move into room"

"please machine
tickle me"

it's all there
my darling
in those words

move into room

please tickle me

i lie here
on my couch
alone

christ
that my love
were in my arms

i was
searching
for words

- Plus ça change