Meaning a Life

January 1, 2020
An expanded edition of a 1978 memoir about poetry and one's purpose in midcentury America. Originally published by Black Sparrow Press and now saved from obscurity, this sonorous autobiography (and only prose publication) from painter and poet Oppen (Poems & Transpositions, 1980, etc.) chronicles the lives of two literary soul mates. Born in 1908 in Kalispell, Montana, the author grew up with a desire not only to leave her rural lifestyle but to pursue a lifelong conversation, learning "as much as we are able of the universe we are part of." She went to Oregon State University, where she met her future husband, George; although she was expelled after their first date for breaking curfew, their bond was cast. "Our joined lives," she recalls, "seem[ed] to us both choice and inevitability." Oppen's narrative shifts seamlessly into a collective memoir as she chronicles the couple's travels from San Francisco to New York, Paris, and Mexico, tested on their way by the hardships of World War II. Of their many travels, Oppen quotes Sherwood Anderson: "we wanted to know if we were any good out there." Although George won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1969, Mary's memoir is by no means in his shadow; their love and intellectual union is rhapsodically mutual and an inspiring achievement to behold. Midcentury poetry aficionados will enjoy another layer: George was part of the "objectivist" poetry movement, and Charles Reznikoff and Louis Zukofsky appear throughout the Oppens' travels. While these poets challenged the conceptual side of their craft, Mary looked to the entire literary canon for her voice. On Virginia Woolf, she writes, "Virginia herself found in her writing what life meant to her, and reading her works I found a little more of what life meant to me." The author divined meaning and guidance from the literary lives around her and channeled those forces into a passionate memoir that will continue to resound with readers even decades after its publication. Inspiring recollections of love, literature, and a search for meaning.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2020

Artist, activist, and wife of objectivist poet George Oppen recounts her life in Montana and Oregon in the early 1900s and her marriage to and partnership with her husband. Her memoir, originally published in 1978, has been reissued with a new introduction by the poet and editor Jeffrey Yang and previously unpublished writings. The couple met in 1928 when they were students at Oregon State University. After being expelled for breaking curfew together, they traveled the country, hitchhiking and sailing, before moving to France in 1929. The rise of fascism alarmed them, and they returned to the U.S. in 1932, only to confront a country in the throes of the Great Depression. Mary notes that after they disembarked in Baltimore, "grown men, respectable men--our fathers--stepped forward to ask for a nickel, rag in hand to wipe our windshield." The Oppens felt compelled to set aside their artistic ambitions and begin advocating for the unemployed; they joined the Communist Party and the Workers Alliance. Despite the fact that George served in World War II, the couple was under suspicion for their pre-war communist affiliations, which lead them to exile in Mexico City from 1949-57. VERDICT Oppen's memoir is a rich history of leftist political thought in America while chronicling a literary companionship and enduring love story; it is highly recommended for all collections.--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.