The Building of the Skyscraper by George Oppen
"The Building of the Skyscraper" by George Oppen is a poem that explores the interplay between construction—both literal and metaphorical—and the complexities of meaning. Using the image of a steelworker who has "learned not to look down," Oppen emphasizes the focus required to navigate life's tasks while hinting at a deeper philosophical inquiry. He extends this metaphor to suggest that words, much like the materials used in construction, can sometimes be inadequate or misleading, yet they are essential for building understanding. Oppen reflects on the duality of language, asserting that while some words may seem devoid of meaning, there is always "something to mean," which underscores the poet's role in articulating the human experience.
Throughout the poem, Oppen juxtaposes the constructed urban environment with the natural world, culminating in a poignant acknowledgment of both the beauty and confusion inherent in life. His imagery captures a sense of vertigo that accompanies the search for meaning in a vast and ambiguous cultural landscape. Ultimately, Oppen's work invites readers to consider the challenges of expression and the significance of finding clarity within the complexities of existence, making it a thoughtful reflection on the act of creation itself.
The Building of the Skyscraper by George Oppen
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1965 (collected in This in Which, 1965)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Oppen’s fascination with the meaning latent in an individual word, and his interest in the manner in which meaning is established and explored through the arrangement or construction of the words in a poem, led him in many works to compare the artist to an artisan or builder. In “The Building of the Skyscraper,” Oppen begins with a rather specific image, a steelworker who has “learned not to look down,” suggesting a kind of focus or concentration on the task at hand. Then, in a characteristic shift in vision, Oppen moves directly to his philosophic position, extending the poem beyond the steelworker by saying, “And there are words we have learned/ Not to look at,/ Not to look for substance/ Below them.” He thus opens the poem to include a broader human reliance on the materials available for building an artifice of understanding—materials that might not bear the weight of too much close scrutiny.
In a letter, Oppen explained that, for him, the word “building” carried connotations of creation and “the building of one’s life.” He explained further that he felt the word “skyscraper” had a kind of “homeliness” that grounded the poem in the fundamental flow of life. This grounding permits a turn toward the reflective that brings the poet to “the verge/ Of vertigo.” The balance between the skills required to continue a person’s daily tasks and the curiosity that draws a person to inquire into areas that reveal no real or final answer carries the poem onward into the second stanza, in which the question of words is directly addressed.
After asserting that “there are words that mean nothing,” Oppen states one of his basic tenets: “But there is something to mean.” It is “the business of the poet” to struggle amid the “things of the world” and “to speak them and himself out.” This is Oppen’s central goal as a poet. He explained that “to speak them out” conveys both a sense of exhausting the possibilities of meaning in a situation and the ambition of the poet to speak “out-wards,” or toward a greater meaning or larger audience.
The final stanza introduces the natural world in a heartfelt paean: “O, the tree, growing from the sidewalk,” Oppen declares, contrasting its “green buds” with the human-made, perplexing uncertainty of “the culture of the streets.” He concludes by reintroducing the vertigo of the initial stanza in a final image of a nation stretching back three hundred years toward an origin that is so open to construction—its “bare land” like a blank page—that the importance of finding amid the vastness “a thing/ Which is” offers ample compensation for the vertigo, the suffering, that the poet/builder must experience.
Bibliography
Duplessis, Rachel Blau, ed. The Selected Letters of George Oppen. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990.
Hatlen, Burton, ed. George Oppen, Man and Poet. Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 1981.
Ironwood 5 (1975).
Ironwood 13 (Fall, 1985).
Nicholls, Peter. “Of Being Ethical: Reflections on George Oppen.” Journal of American Studies 31 (August, 1997): 153-170.
Oppen, Mary. Meaning a Life: An Autobiography. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1978.
Paideuma 10 (Spring, 1981).
Thackrey, Susan. George Oppen: A Radical Practice. San Francisco: O Books and the Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives, 2001.