George Oppen

George Oppen, born as George Oppenheimer ( born April 24, 1908 in New Rochelle, New York; † 7 July 1984 ) was an American poet who is included in the group of Objectivists.

Life

Oppen was the child of a wealthy Jewish family and grew up just north of New York City. His mother died when he was four years old. With his step- mother, he did not get on well. Finding his skills in sailing later in his poetry expression. A domestic worker gave him knowledge of carpentry, so that he could earn his living later in life as a carpenter and joiner.

In 1917 the family moved to San Francisco, where Oppen attended a military -oriented high school. After he had survived as a driver in a serious car accident, he was traumatized. This meant that he was in 1925 expelled from school shortly before graduation. He visited in the following months relative of his stepmother in Scotland and heard lectures at the University of St Andrews. In 1925 he began studying at Oregon State Agricultural College in Corvallis, now Oregon State University. There he met his future wife Mary Colby. The young couple was against the house rules and spent the night outside the College. The result was that Mary excluded and he was suspended. 1927 changed the family name of his father Oppenheimer Oppenheimer.

The pair hitchhiked in the next few years by the U.S., got married and got by with odd jobs. Oppen began to write his first poems, which were occasionally printed in local newspapers. The pair went in 1929 and 1930 to New York City, where the two among other poets such as Louis Zukofsky and Charles Reznikoff met and the musician Tibor Serly and the designer Russel Wright met. In 1929, Oppen a small inheritance that enabled independent living for the couple, first in 1930 in California and then in France. In France, he founded the magazine with Zukofsky To Publishers. In the short-lived magazine work of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams were published. During this time, Oppen published his first book of poems Discrete Series.

The Oppens returned in 1933 to New York City and founded by Williams, Zukofsky and Reznikoff the publisher Objectivist Press. Oppenheimer was a member of the Communist Party and in 1936 their campaign manager in Brooklyn. In subsequent years, the couple was actively involved in strikes and relief operations. Oppen was tried and acquitted of assaulting the police. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was exempted from military service for now, since he worked in the defense industry. However, he left his employer and volunteered for the front. This he witnessed in 1944 in eastern France and during the German Ardennes offensive, in which he was severely wounded. In 1945, the Purple Heart he was awarded and he returned to New York City.

Oppen and his wife went to Mexico in the postwar years, as they were sure that they, like others would be persecuted because of their communist past by the U.S. Committee for Un-American Activities of Joseph McCarthy. In Mexico Oppen operated a small business for the manufacture of furniture, constantly watched by the Mexican police and the FBI. The couple could not return home because their passports had been invalidated since 1950. Only in 1958 they were able to apply for new passports and visit her daughter at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. In 1960 she settled in Brooklyn, visited Mexico but regularly. Oppen began to write poetry and publish it.

In the 1970s, Oppen released his last volume of poetry with the help of his wife, as already showed the first signs of Alzheimer 's disease. In 1984, he died in a nursing home in California.

Prizes and awards

His third band from the 1960s Of Being Numerous from the year 1968 was awarded the 1969 Pulitzer Prize in the category of poetry.

Publications (selection)

Literature on George Oppen (selection)

• Burton Hatlen, ed: George Oppen. Man and Poet. Orono: National Poetry Foundation in 1981.
• Mary Oppen: Meaning a Life. An Autobiography. Second edition Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press 1990.
• Michael Heller: Speaking the Estranged. Essays on the Work of George Oppen. Cambridge: Salt, 2008.
• Stefan Ripplinger: " reification. Poet, communist and Zimmermann - George Oppen for the hundredth birthday. " concretely, 4/ 2008.