"A pure mathematical series would be one in which each term is derived from the preceding term by a rule"
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Under the mild, almost textbook calm of that sentence is a poet thinking about purity the way modernism did: as discipline, not innocence. Oppen’s “pure mathematical series” isn’t really about math. It’s a model for how meaning should earn itself - term by term, step by step, without decorative leaps. The key phrase is “by a rule”: not inspiration, not confession, not the mush of association, but a procedure that can be tested against what came before.
That’s classic Oppen, a central figure of Objectivist poetry, where the ethical claim is embedded in the craft. His poems often feel like they’re assembled under a bright light: spare, exact, suspicious of rhetoric. A “series” suggests accumulation over time, and Oppen’s life makes that word throb with context. He paused his writing for years, joined political activism, fought in World War II, then returned to poetry with an intensity that reads like a reckoning. When he invokes a rule-bound sequence, he’s also staging a question about continuity: How do you go on, after history breaks the line?
The subtext is a quiet argument with romantic genius. Oppen imagines art not as a sudden gift but as responsibility: each move must answer the last. The elegance of the sentence is its trap - it sounds neutral, even antiseptic, while smuggling in an aesthetic manifesto. “Pure” here means accountable. And the real dare is implied: can a poem be as rigorous as a proof without becoming inhuman?
That’s classic Oppen, a central figure of Objectivist poetry, where the ethical claim is embedded in the craft. His poems often feel like they’re assembled under a bright light: spare, exact, suspicious of rhetoric. A “series” suggests accumulation over time, and Oppen’s life makes that word throb with context. He paused his writing for years, joined political activism, fought in World War II, then returned to poetry with an intensity that reads like a reckoning. When he invokes a rule-bound sequence, he’s also staging a question about continuity: How do you go on, after history breaks the line?
The subtext is a quiet argument with romantic genius. Oppen imagines art not as a sudden gift but as responsibility: each move must answer the last. The elegance of the sentence is its trap - it sounds neutral, even antiseptic, while smuggling in an aesthetic manifesto. “Pure” here means accountable. And the real dare is implied: can a poem be as rigorous as a proof without becoming inhuman?
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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