Harry Northup is a poet and actor whose contributions to cinema and poetry have made him an extraordinarily distinctive figure in American culture. The pleasure he takes as an advocate of those who enable poetry to flourish is particularly on view in his program, “Harry’s Poetry Hour,” which is broadcast out of MPTF (Motion Picture Television Fund) in Woodland Hills. His guests on over 250 episodes include poets from all over the nation and he does not restrict himself to presenting just the work of living poets.
Given that Harry’s own poetry has frequently involved long sequences of poems, it should come as no surprise that he recently invited several Los Angeles based poets to participate in a reading of George Oppen’s “Of Being Numerous,” which won the Pulitzer Prize over 50 years ago. Along with Paul Vangelisti and Phoebe MacAdams, I took part in reading a portion of Oppen’s long sequence, which is now available on YouTube. By chance, I was assigned particularly poignant sections concerning his recollections of what he observed as a solider in Europe during World War II.
One might be tempted to believe that having won a Pulitzer might suffice to make a poet canonical, and yet Paul Hoover omitted him from the Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry. (Fortunately, Oppen is included in Library of America’s “Poets of World War II.) Being pushed aside by an editor such as Hoover has consequences: too few young poets are familiar with his work. As such, I would recommend that anyone not familiar with “Of Being Numerous” get a copy of the poem to read in tandem with the broadcast the second time through. The individual numbers of the sections of the sequence are omitted by the readers in the MPTF presentation, and it will slightly reframe the poem to have the numbers mark off the increments as you experience the voicing of the poem.
Don’t wait, though, to hear the poem, simply because you don’t have time to get to a library.
Listen to it now, and be prepared for one of the most intricate and deeply felt explorations of the human condition by any poet whose work deserves a place on your shelves at home.
About Bill Mohr