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The George Oppen Memorial BBQ could be considered a ritual, an invocation, a celebration, a protest. Its characters and landscape are an amorphous, chimeric Promised Land where retributions are real, demagogues are punished, and freedom is a call for both daiquiris and rumination. It is a network against austerity and homogeneity. It is a commune with enough space for the deepest of privacies. It is a place to destabilize the Western canon, to make cracks about Schopenhauer, to exile white messiahs, to mourn Fred Hampton, and Fela Kuti, and Federico Garcia Lorca. It is a brief rupture in time and space where possibilities are freed of their enclosures, where unrest is realized and invigorated. It is the moment when all the lights go out, right before the riot starts.
About the author
Eric Tyler Benick is the author of the poetry collection the fox hunts (Beautiful Days, 2023) along with several chapbooks. With Nick Rossi, he runs Ursus Americanus Press, a publisher of smaller poetic works. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, The Harvard Advocate, Southeast Review, and Tagvverk. He lives in Brooklyn.
![Eric Tyler Benick - The George Oppen Memorial BBQ - [A Poem]](https://blob.cede.ch/books/136000000/136271000/136271770_17.jpg?v=2)