The Oppens Remembered: Poetry, Politics, and Friendship

Poet George Oppen (1908-1984) and artist and writer Mary Oppen (1908-1990) were striking, exemplary, and somewhat mysterious figures of the last decades of the twentieth century. They had a gift for poetry, politics, and friendship. In this book, poets, editors, writers of fiction and screen-plays, composer, and teachers who were shaped by knowing the couple consider their encounters and relationships with George and Mary Oppen. This experiment in collective biography shows the ways groupings, poetic generations, and gender operate in the arts. Oppen functioned as a mentor, an irritant, a support, an example; the Oppens together, because of their own intense coupledom and the strength of Mary Oppen, provided a gender model and a model of the companionate artistic life. These memoirs are set at a politically crucial time in US history, from the Cold War through the war in Vietnam and the women's movement, from debates over extreme left allegiances to the dilemma of the draft. Together,