In the Common Dream of George Oppen

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Comprised of both poetry and essays, Joseph Bradshaw's IN THE COMMON DREAM OF GEORGE OPPEN makes its premise to imagine what bodies of work might exist in Oppen's fabled 25-year silence. By turns, the book forcefully projects a singularly fabricated biography onto the figure of Oppen, then self-reflexively retracts, divagating through a poet's desire for mentorship and community. Bringing in everything from ruminations on blurry memories of Idaho's landscape, to dialogues held across centuries and continents with the likes of figures such as the Elephant Man, IN THE COMMON DREAM OF GEORGE OPPEN brushes up against the fragile boundary between the finished and the unfinished poem, or a finished or unfinished life.