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Geoffrey G. O'Brien

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Geoffrey G. O'Brien

Geoffrey G. O'Brien is the author of Experience in Groups (Wave Books, 2018), People on Sunday (Wave Books, 2013), Metropole (University of California Press, 2011), Green and Gray (University of California Press, 2007), and The Guns and Flags Project (University of California Press, 2002). He teaches English at the University of California, Berkeley and San Quentin State Prison and lives in Berkeley, California.

by this poet

poem
Another Poem
Geoffrey G. O'Brien
2015

I bypassed all the compromise,
The first ten problems of speech
And the latest, the sharpest, the contest,
Then began, having already fallen,
To rise just less, weaker than
My chore, yours, made else
By othering, by day by day,
The schedules, the routes, task
Whose claim I

poem
From Honey to Ashes
Geoffrey G. O'Brien
2012
What follows is terms and classifications, the West 
Of speech congratulating itself within
A system so complex there's no way not to be 
Effective. Just as they had planned the streets
On either side are lined with all that's needed,
Storefronts whose glass returns a look 
Filled with the contents it displays
(
poem
Series
Geoffrey G. O'Brien
2013

To remember people in the act
Of speaking is to love them
And not the turquoise substrate
Redon supposed was all there was
To vases, any container, the vessel
Objects are. To remember
People in the act of speaking
Is to love them, but not for anything
They say. An open mouth

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