“Objectivists” 1927-1934 Section 6 - George and Mary Oppen Contents

Notes - Section 6 - George and Mary Oppen

1 Mary Oppen, Meaning a Life: An Autobiography (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow, 1978), p. 68. Most of the facts presented in this section are from this book; the rest are from a personal interview with the Oppens, 6 April 1980, San Francisco.

2 Meaning a Life, p. 83.

3 Zukofsky, Letter to Pound, 6

4 Oppen, Primitive (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow, 1978), pp. 30-31.

5 Gaudier-Brzeska, p. 89.

6 F. S. Flint, “Imagisme,” Poetry (March 1913), 199; Ezra Pound, Pavannes and Divisions (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918), p. 95; Ezra Pound, Literary Essays, p. 3.

7 Ezra Pound, Selected Prose, pp. 374-375. See section 8. IV.

8 Literary Essays, p. 4.

9 George Oppen, Interview with L. S. Dembo, Contemporary Literature, 10, 2 (Spring 1969), 161; reprinted in The Contemporary Writers: Interviews With Sixteen Novelists and Poets, eds. L. S. Dembo and Cerena N. Pondrom (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), pp. 173-174.

10 F. S. Flint, “Imagisme,” Poetry (March 1913), 199.

11 Poetry (March 1913), 200-201; Literary Essays, p. 4.

12 The Contemporary Writer, p. 174.

13 The Contemporary Writer, p. 175.

14 Meaning a Life, p. 89.

15 Personal Interview with George and Mary Oppen, 28 November 1978, San Francisco. See Poems 1918-1936, Volume I of the Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff, ed. Seamus Cooney (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow, 1976), p. 111, No. 20.

16 The Contemporary Writer, p. 185. Oppen was remembering section 36 in “Of Being Numerous,” Collected Poems (New York: New Directions, 1975), p. 176.

17 The Contemporary Writer, p. 173.

18 Poetry (March 1913), 199; Literary Essays, p. 3 (revised slightly).

19 Selected Prose, p. 375.

20 Williams, The Autobiography, p. 264-265.

21 See Williams, “Introduction to The Wedge,” Selected Essays, pp. 255-257. See also “An Essay on Virginia,” This Quarter, Paris, 1, 1 (Spring 1925). 173-175; Imaginations, pp. 319-322.

22 “The New Poetical Economy,” Poetry, 44, 4 (July 1934), 220-225; in George Oppen: Man and Poet, ed. Burton Hatlin (Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 1981), pp. 267-270.

23 Poetry (July 1934), 221.

24 The Contemporary Writer, p. 180.

25 Discrete Series, intro. Ezra Pound (New York: The Objectivist Press, 1934), p. 7; Collected Poems, p. 3.

26 Barrett H. Clark and Maxim Lieber, eds., Great Short Stories of the Wor1d (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1938), p. 970-984.

27 The Contemporary Writer, p. 182.

28 Meaning a Life, p. 76.

29 The Contemporary Writer, pp. 185-186. The word “curious” occurs at the end of “A Language of New York,” and “Of Being Numerous,” Collected Poems, pp. 101, 179. “A Narrative” ends with “Of clarity, and of respect,” Collected Poems, p. 140. The passage “The virtue of the mind // Is that emotion // which causes / To see” occurs in “Guest Room,” Collected Poems, p. 87.

30 Discrete Series, pp. v-vi.

31 Imaginations, pp. 299, 288, 287.

32 Discrete Series, p. 8; Collected Poems, p. 3.

33 Discrete Series, p. v. Pound’s criterion for bad criti- cism was derived from Williams’ position in “George Antheil and the Cantilene Critics: A Note of the First Performance of Antheil’s Music in N Y C: April 10, 1927,” transition, 13, American Number (Sumer 1928), 237-240; in Imaginations, pp. 351-355. See Pound, “Dr. Williams’ Position,” Literary Essays (New Directions, 1968), p. 393.

34 “An Objectivists”,Anthology, ed. Louis Zukofsky (NY and Le Beausset, Var, France: To Publishers, 1932; rpt. Folcroft Library Editions, 1975), p. 43.

35 Zukofsky, Letter to Rakosi, 7 October 1931, Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

36 This title was also used for the third and first poems of Discrete Series in the “Objectivists” issue of Poetry, 37, 5 (February 1931), 256-257.

37 Discrete Series, p. 9; Collected Poems, p. 4.

38 “The Mind’s Own Place,” Montemora, 1 (Fall 1975), 133. The quotation, “nothing more than an extension of content,” derives from Robert Creeley, in Charles Olson, “Projective Verse,” which Williams quoted in his Autobiography, p. 330.

39 Montemora, 1 (Fall 1975), 134.

40 The Contemporary Writer, p. 180.

41 Discrete Series, p. vi.

42 Oppen, “A Conversation with George Oppen,” with Charles Amirkhanian and David Gitin, Ironwood 5, 3, 1 (1975), 24. Compare also my poem, “Automobile”, which was inspired by Oppen’s poem.

43 The Contemporary Writer, pp. 180-181.

44 Discrete Series, p. 15; Collected Poems, p. 6.

45 Oppen, “An Interview with George and Mary Oppen,” with Kevin Power, Montemora, 4 (1978), 187.

46 The Contemporary Writer, p. 181.

47 Discrete Series, p. 22; Collected Poems, p. 9.

48 The Charles Reznikoff Archive, the Archive for New Poetry, University of California—San Diego. The typescript consists of 27 poems, some different from their final versions, and four of which are not in the published book:

  1. Brain / All / Nuclei / Blinking / Kinetic / Electric sign / A / Pig / Dances / Painfully / Cannon / Rockets / A curve // Behind / This / Eye / No / Further brain; // The tendons / The slots / Pianola / Into [page break] Slots / Sound / A room’s / Back- / Ground
    Active Anthology, ed. Pound (London: Faber and Faber, 1933), p. 217.
    • Steamer at the pier,
    • Nose to the shore
    • A man walks the still decks
    • The pigeons fly from the dark bough
    • unleaved to the window ledge;
    • There is no face.
    • A laced gaiter
    • On the left fore-hock
    • Panoplied
    • To draw the hearse—
    • It evidently remains true that this horse
    • born black-coated, toes in the right
    • fore-leg:
    • Details of the corpse,
    • Hearse, bereavement.

Also, the first three of “Discrete Series I-IV,” Poetry, 39, 4 (January 1932), 198-199, are uncollected. These poems read:

49 Poetry (July 1934), 223-224.

50 Discrete Series, p. 35; Collected Poems, p. lb.

51 Montemora, 4 (1978), 186.

52 Discrete Series, p. 10; Collected Poems, p. 4.

53 Discrete Series, p. 25; Collected Poems, p. 10.

54 Discrete Series, pp. 29-31; Collected Poems, pp. 12-13.

55 Montemora, 4 (1978), 187.

56 Discrete Series, p. 37; Collected Poems, p. l4.