What does George Oppen's poem Leviathan mean?

Answer 1

thank you for asking this. it is one poem i have memorized and still know by heart. i will only interpret some excerpts, hopefully you could fill in the rest.

Truth also the pursuit of it:

Like happiness, and it will not stand

one of the most fundamental statements. truth is not static. one pursuits it the way one pursues happiness (and the Leviathan - an allusion to Moby Dick)

.... How shall we say?

In ordinary discourse-

We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words,

The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicable

Is the 'preponderance of objects.'

this is a meditation on an impossibility of communicating with others and the need to talk and to understand each other despite of this fact. as to the "objects" i *think* he is talking about insentient entities:chairs, tables, what have you, and about an incredulity we feel towards them because they are even more impenetrable and difficult to relate to, grasp.

And we have become the present.

immediacy, being able to understand only the present moment

We must talk now. Fear

Is fear. But we abandon one another.

reiteration of the previous statement regarding human communication. a call not to give up on the pursuit, however difficult this might prove.