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Oppen (George) Papers
MSS 0016
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Table of contents
Languages:
English
Contributing Institution:
Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla 92093-0175
Title: George Oppen Papers
Identifier/Call Number: MSS 0016
Physical Description:
15 Linear feet
(34 archives boxes, 1 flat box, and 1 map case folder)
Date (inclusive): 1958-1984
Abstract: Literary papers of George Oppen (1908-1984), objectivist poet and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969. Materials
range in date from 1958-1984 and include correspondence, manuscripts and typescripts for all the poems contained in Oppen's
nine published books, drafts and fragments of unpublished poems, typescripts of published and unpublished essays, and interviews,
translations, and reviews of Oppen's work.
Scope and Content of Collection
Literary papers of George Oppen (1908-1984), objectivist poet and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969. Materials
range in date from 1958-1984 and include manuscripts and typescripts for all the poems contained in Oppen's nine published
books, drafts and fragments of unpublished poems, typescripts of published and unpublished essays, transcripts of Oppen's
verse, and copies of reviews of Oppen's work. Of special interest are loose leaf pages of notes, and Oppen's personal daybooks,
all of which help to reveal his thinking about diverse subjects. The largest part of the collection consists of correspondence
to Oppen from family members, editors, poets and other writers, and admirers of Oppen's work. The collection is arranged in
two parts, consisting of materials processed in 1985, and a small addition processed in 1989.
The accession processed in 1985 is arranged in ten series: 1) CORRESPONDENCE, 2) NOTES, JOTTINGS, ETC., 3) DAYBOOKS, 4) POETRY,
5) READING MANUSCRIPTS, 6) PROSE, 1962-1984, 7) INTERVIEWS, 1968-1980, 8) TRANSLATIONS, 9) REVIEWS AND EPHEMERA, and 10) MICROFILM.
The accessions processed in 1989 are arranged in one series: 11) MISCELLANEOUS ADDITIONS.
Oppen was born in 1908 in New Rochelle, New York, the son of George A. Oppen and Elsie Rothfeld Oppen. He died in 1984 in
San Francisco, a victim of Alzheimer's Disease.
When Oppen was 10 years old, his father remarried and moved the family to San Francisco where he opened a profitable chain
of movie houses. Although his family was well-to-do, Oppen attended Californian public schools, and in 1926 he enrolled in
the Agricultural College, presently Oregon State University, at Corvalis. Soon after his arrival at Corvalis, Oppen met Mary
Colby, formerly of Grants Pass, Oregon. Both George and Mary were forced to leave the university before the end of their first
semester--George for a semester and Mary for good--because of violating the girl's dormitory curfew while on their first date.
Oppen returned to San Francisco to work for his father for a short time. Shortly after Mary joined him in San Francisco, the
two decided not to return to university studies, or to accept the middle class comforts that Oppen's father offered. As Mary
Oppen explains in her autobiography MEANING A LIFE:
We were constantly searching--searching in our
travels in our pursuit of friends and in our
conversation concerning all that we saw
and felt about the world. We were searching
for a way to avoid the trap that our class
backgrounds held for us if we relented in our
attempts to escape from them...We had learned
at college that poetry was being written in
our own times, and that in order for us to write
it was not necessary for us to ground ourselves in
the academic; the ground we needed was the
roads we were travelling.
In 1927 George and Mary left San Francisco and were married in Dallas, Texas while on their way to New York City.
The Oppens arrived in New York City in 1928 and soon fell into company with Louis Zukofsky and Charles Reznikoff, two New
York City Jewish poets who, following the example of William Carlos Williams, were intent on reclaiming Pound's Imagism from
the influence of Amy Lowell and other "Amygists." Out of the nexus of like-minded poets the Objectivist movement was born.
The term was first employed in Zukofsky's essays "Program: 'Objectivist', 1931" and "Sincerity and Objectification," which
Zukofsky included at the end of an issue of Poetry he had edited for Harriet Monroe. Besides Zukofski, Oppen, Williams, and
Reznikoff, the issue also included work by Carl Rakosi, Kenneth Rexroth, Basil Bunting, Robert McAlmon, and several other
poets whose work Zukofsky believed to exemplify the Objectivist program.
In 1929 the Oppens moved to France where they established To, Publishers. Though they published work by Pound, Williams and
a larger version of Zukofsky's Objectivist anthology, the venture failed because American booksellers considered their books
paperbacks and, thus, refused to stock them. After returning to the United States in 1933, the Oppens again tried their hand
at publishing with the establishment of the Objectivist Press. Besides additional works by Pound and Williams, the press published
Oppen's volume of poetry, Discrete Series, which had been written in 1929 before the Oppens left for France and revised shortly
after their return to the States.
The Objectivist Press may have succeeded if it had been the Oppen's foremost concern. However, the suffering brought on by
the Depression and evident throughout the country captured their attention. "Apprehesion mixed with elation," Mary Oppen writes,
"as we disembarked at Baltimore and began the drive to New York City. As we approached the first stoplight, grown men, respectable
men--our fathers--stepped forward to ask for a nickle, rag in hand, to wipe our windshield. This ritual was repeated every
time we paused, until we felt we were in a nightmare, our fathers impoverished." In 1935 the Oppens turned their backs on
their lives as artists and for the next five years worked as strike organizers, first in Brooklyn and later in Utica, New
York, for the Communist Party of the United States of America. According to Mary Oppen, "we decided to work with the Communist
Party, not as artist or writer because we did not find honesty or sincerity in the so-called arts of the left....We said to
each other, 'Let's work with the unemployed and leave our other interest in the arts for a later time'" Oppen's own explanation
to L.S. Dembo in 1968 is more to the point: "If you do something politically, you do something that has political efficacy.
And if you decide to write poetry, then you write poetry, not something that you hope, or deceive yourself into believing,
can save people who are suffering...In a way I gave up poetry because of the pressures of what for the moment I'll call conscience."
The "later time" did not occur until 1958. The years of political activism were followed by the birth of the Oppens' daughter
Linda. Oppen then worked as a die cutter in a factory until 1942 when he was drafted into the United States Army. Shortly
before V-E day, he suffered multiple wounds from an exploding shell. After the war, the Oppens settled in Huntington Beach,
California where Oppen employed himself first as a housing contractor then as a maker of hi-fi cabinets. Oppen was forced
to give up his business and flee to Mexico with his family in 1950, after the FBI began to threaten him and Mary with imprisonment
for their refusal to betray their friends. Soon after arriving in Mexico City, Oppen joined with a native of Mexico in operating
a furniture factory and entertained thoughts of entering the Mexican real estate market. Those thoughts were put to rest when
Oppen wrote his first poem in twenty-five years. In 1958, he and Mary returned to New York City where they lived until the
late 1960s. Throughout the 1970s, until Oppen's affliction with Alzheimer's disease prohibited his travelling, the Oppens
spent their summer months on Deer Isle, Maine and the rest of the year in San Francisco.
It is difficult to say whether Oppen's return to writing poetry signifies the synthesis of his artistic and political impulses
or his confession that political activism is no more useful to changing the world than art is. Regardless of how critics have
responded to this question, they typically share the opinion that Oppen's return to writing resulted in the production of
a formidible and important collection of poetry "whose craft and inquiring intelligence are a significant influence on contemporary
American poetry." In 1962 Oppen published THE MATERIALS, his second collection of verse. It was followed three years later
by THIS IN WHICH (1965). In 1969, his third collection of verse, OF BEING NUMEROUS, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. SEASCAPE:
NEEDLE'S EYE was published in 1972 and was followed in 1973 with the appearance of the Fulcrum Press edition of his COLLECTED
POEMS. In 1975, New Directions brought out a more complete edition of Oppen's collected work, which also included a section
of the work titled "Myth of the Blaze." Finally, Oppen's last collection, PRIMITIVE, which was edited by Mary Oppen, appeared
in 1978.
George Oppen Papers, MSS 16. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.
Acquired 1984-1989
The George Oppen papers, with the exception of the 1989 accession, are restricted due to fragility. Materials have been microfilmed
and scanned. Researchers may place requests to access digital copies of through our virtual reading room service. Researchers
wishing to use the original materials must first obtain the permission of the director of Special Collections & Archives.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
American poetry -- 20th century
Oppen, George -- Archives
Reznikoff, Charles, 1894-1976 -- Correspondence
Shapiro, Harvey, 1924-2013 -- Correspondence
DuPlessis, Rachel Blau -- Correspondence
Mourelatos, Linda Oppen, 1940- -- Correspondence
Enslin, Theodore -- Correspondence
Bronk, William -- Correspondence
Ignatow, David, 1914-1997 -- Correspondence
Heller, Michael, 1937- -- Correspondence
Martin, John, 1947- -- Correspondence
Laughlin, James, 1914-1997 -- Correspondence
Zukofsky, Louis, 1904-1978 -- Correspondence
Weinberger, Eliot -- Correspondence
Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963 -- Correspondence
Taggart, John, 1942- -- Correspondence
Tomlinson, Charles, 1927-2015 -- Correspondence
Degnan, June Oppen -- Correspondence
Oppen, Mary, 1908-1990 -- Archives