On Thursday, November 10, 2016 the poet Michael O’Brien, born in 1939, died in New York. Michael was a superb poet, a master of what Ronald Johnson called the “Madame Curie” principle of modern poetry, “compression and radiation.” One predominant model of modern poetry is that innovation yields excellence. Such poetry is valued for its inventiveness. Another, less frequently invoked model is that of caretaking, what Basil Bunting indicated as a desire as a poet “to have maintained the art.” Language is always degrading and the poet, in an expressive precision, stays for a time that erosion. It’s a seemingly more modest position for a poet to take, but no less heroic, after all. Language cunningly placed, used to observe the world minutely, magnifies that world in the imagination. O’Brien was one of our great caretakers. Here is “In the Elevator,” from Sills (2000):
creaks like a mast
her leather jacket
as her body stirs
He also had a special sensitivity to the time we spend falling asleep and then waking up. Here are two poems from his superb collection Avenues (2012):
He dreams of a
poem, certain words in
a certain order that,
once spoken, would let
her sleep. He needs to
find it. Needs
to find it.
::
Sleep? He lay
among his
thoughts for a while.
His crowded thoughts.
Counted his
breaths until
the numbers
began to
count themselves,
their number-
life, and he was
breathing for them.
Michael became a friend a decade ago. I met him a few times but mainly we corresponded. His letters were like his poems: shrewd, apostrophaic, honest. I’ll miss them, and him. May he rest in peace.
