A Poetry of Action: George Oppen and Communism

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Notes

¹ This study utilizes Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents made available by the Freedom of Information Act in 1995, 1999 and 2005–2006, many of which were previously unavailable to Oppen biographers, commentators, and critics. My sincere gratitude is due to David Hardy and Gloria Ralph of the FBI Freedom of Information Act Department for their assistance in acquiring the Oppens’ FBI files.

² Mary Oppen, Meaning a Life (Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1978). Hereafter cited as MAL by page number in parentheses.

³ L. S. Dembo, “Interview with George Oppen,” in L. S. Dembo and Cynthia Pondrom, eds., The Contemporary Writer (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), 188.

⁴ Burton Hatlen, ed., George Oppen: Man and Poet (Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 1984), 25. Hereafter cited in text as GMP by page number in parentheses.

⁵ Dennis Young, “Conversation with Mary Oppen,” Iowa Review, 18 (fall 1988), 38.

⁶ Dembo, “Interview with George Oppen,” 188.

⁷ In his interview with Reinhold Schiffer Oppen explained that he did not consider himself a populist in the sense of someone who uses ordinary, everyday speech in poetry, as the proletarian writers did. Rather, he was a populist in the “strict political sense.” Oppen's definition is probably similar to that of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (3rd Edn) in that he is referring generally to a “believer in the rights, wisdom and virtues of the common people,” and not specifically to the populist tradition associated with Louisiana Senator Huey Long and Father Charles Edward Coughlin, a tradition that arose from the 19th century agrarian American West and often associated with anti-Semitism, racism, and a belief in a vast financial conspiracy controlled by the Rothschilds and Wall Street. Interestingly, in this same interview with Schiffer, conducted in 1974, Oppen made an interesting slip, referring to his political perspective at first as communist, before quickly correcting this slip by describing it as populist. Reinhold Schiffer, “Interview with George Oppen,” Sagetrieb, 3 (Winter 1984), 15.

⁸ Rocco Marinaccio, “George Oppen's ‘I’ve seen America book’: Discrete Series and the Thirties Road Narrative,” American Literature, 74 (September 2002), 539.

⁹ Zukofsky's “Objectivist” theory of poetry, and the loose consortium of poets defined as such by Zukofsky, is the subject of a number of studies. The most authoritative sources of information on these poets and the “movement” in which they were peripherally involved are found in the National Poetry Foundation's Man or Woman and Poet series (with volumes on Zukofsky, Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, Carl Rakosi, Basil Bunting, and Lorine Niedecker, the canonical “Objectivist” poets); Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Peter Quartermain, eds., The Objectivist Nexus, (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1999); Michael Heller, Conviction’s Net of Branches (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984). See also Barry Ahearn, ed., Pound/Zukofksy: The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky (New York, NY: New Directions, 1987), which elucidates the formation of the “Objectivist” movement and Pound's decisive role in its development.

¹⁰ Robert Creeley, ed., Selected Poems of George Oppen (New York, NY: New Directions Press, 2002), 175.

¹¹ Rachel Blau DuPlessis, ed., The Selected Letters of George Oppen (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 146. Hereafter cited in text as SL by page number in parentheses.

¹² Young, “Conversation with Mary Oppen,” 21.

¹³ Stephen Cope, ed., The Poetics of Veracity: The Collected Prose and Selected Papers of George Oppen (San Diego, CA: University of California, 2007), 95. Hereafter cited in text as PV by page number in parentheses.

¹⁴ Young, “Conversation with Mary Oppen,” 21.

¹⁵ Young, “Conversation with Mary Oppen,” 38–9.

¹⁶ FBI Report dated 17 June 1944. I refer to files by date and not by author. Government documents have the tendency to place names and organizations in full capitals. For the sake of consistency, and to eradicate any confusion of emphasis, I have corrected these capitalizations to standard capitalization format. I have also corrected any misspellings.

¹⁷ Dembo, “Interview with George Oppen,” 188.

¹⁸ Young, “Conversation with Mary Oppen,” 20.

¹⁹ When questioned by the FBI as to his occupation, Oppen repeatedly described himself as a “writer” or “journalist.” There are several possible reasons for Oppen's perhaps intentionally misleading description: (a) to avoid drawing attention to his association with Zukofsky, Reznikoff, Williams, and (especially) Pound; (b) the shame of describing himself as a “poet,” a description that during the period might insinuate (much as it does now) a liberal or left-wing political agenda; (c) the Bureau simply misunderstanding and assuming a poet to be a “writer” and a “writer” a “journalist”; (d) his having contributed anonymous or pseudonymous articles to communist publications; (e) his having tried, as part of his Party duties, to maintain the appearance of a newspaper reporter, although this is doubtful. What is more unlikely, although tantalizing, are the connotations of “journalism” and Oppen's own view of his poetic work as journalistic exercises, especially when compared with the work of the proletarian poets, which maintained a decidedly biased, non-journalistic perspective.

²⁰ Rachel Blau DuPlessis, “‘The familiar/becomes extreme’: George Oppen and Silence,” North Dakota Quarterly 55 (fall 1987), 20.

²¹ Young, “Conversation with Mary Oppen.”

²² Creeley, Selected Poems of George Oppen, 180–2.

²³ John Seed, “Living the storm: George Oppen's ‘Songs of Experience’,” in John Freeman., ed., Not Comforts, But Visions; Essays on the Poetry of George Oppen (Budleigh Salterton, UK: Interim Press), 18.

²⁴ Young, “Conversation with Mary Oppen,” 22.

²⁵ See MAL, 156–63.

²⁶ FBI Report, 19 July 1944.

²⁷ Dembo, “Interview with George Oppen,” The Contemporary Writer, 187–8.

²⁸ June Degnan, You’re Really Getting Up There When You Find Ex-Lovers on Postage Stamps, unpublished manuscript, 96–97.

²⁹ FBI Report, 30 October 1944.

³⁰ Author interview, July 2005.

³¹ The FBI's “‘Comsab program’ concentrated on communists with a potential for sabotage ‘either because of their training or because of their position relative to vital or strategic installations or industry.’ Finally, under the plans for the detention of communists, the FBI had a ‘Detcom program’ which was concerned with the individuals ‘to be given priority arrest in the event of … an emergency.’ Priority under the Detcom program was given to ‘all top functionaries, all key figures, all individuals tabbed under the Comsab program,’ and ‘any other individual who, though he does not fall in the above groups, should be given priority arrest because of some peculiar circumstances.’” SAC Letter no. 97, Series 1949, 19 October 1949. Quoted from http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIg.htm.

³² FBI Report, 8 September 1944.

³³ FBI Report, 30 October 1944.

³⁴ FBI Report, December 1947.

³⁵ FBI Report, 29 October 1948.

³⁶ FBI Report, 16 December 1953.

³⁷ FBI Report, 25 May 1950.

³⁸ GRU is an English translation of the Russian acronym, which stands for Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie, meaning Main Intelligence Directorate.

³⁹ Venona, New York to Moscow, 19 August 1943.

⁴⁰ John Earl Haynes, e-mail communication to author, 7 August 2006. See John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 358.

⁴¹ FBI Report, 3 February 1954.

⁴² Jean Rouverol, Refugees from Hollywood: A Memoir of the Blacklist Years (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 58.

⁴³ Diana Anhalt, A Gathering of Fugitives: American Political Expatriates in Mexico 1948–1965 (Santa Maria, CA: Archer Books, 2001), 35.

⁴⁴ Anhalt, A Gathering of Fugitives, 39.

⁴⁵ Rouverol, Refugees from Hollywood, 251–2. Jack Levine was a painter associated with the Works Progress Administration (WPA), whose paintings appeared in Time Magazine and who was highly celebrated during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. See Andrew Hemingway, Artists on the Left: American Artists and Communist Movement 1926–1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). Frederick Vanderbilt Field was Executive Secretary of the American Peace Mobilization and according to Julian Zimet was arrested “in 1951 for refusing to reveal to a federal judge the names of contributors to a bail fund for eleven Communist leaders convicted under the Smith Act.” [Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, eds., Tender Comrades (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999), 726]. Albert Maltz was a screenwriter. Bart van der Schelling was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War who recorded songs from that battle on a record Behind the Barbed Wire, produced by the US League of American Writers and released in 1941. Coincidentally, he sat for a portrait by Arshile Gorky, the mentor of Ethel Schwabacher, George Oppen's cousin, for whom Oppen also sat for a portrait. George Pepper was executive secretary of the Screenwriters Guild. According to Zimet the “Hollywood contingent” in Mexico City “included Albert Maltz, Dalton Trumbo, Gordon Kahn, Hugo and Jean Butler and John Bright,” all screenwriters. See John Bright's memoir Worms in the Winecup (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002).

⁴⁶ FBI Report, 16 December 1953.

⁴⁷ FBI Report, 9 March 1951.

⁴⁸ Haynes and Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, 253.

⁴⁹ Anhalt, A Gathering of Fugitives, 73.

⁵⁰ Degnan, You’re Really Getting Up There When You Find Ex-Lovers on Postage Stamps, 98.

⁵¹ FBI Report, 2 July 1952.

⁵² Anhalt, A Gathering of Fugitives, 104–5.

⁵³ Rouverol, Refugees from Hollywood, 57.

⁵⁴ Rouverol, Refugees from Hollywood, 175.

⁵⁵ FBI Report, 3 May 1951.

⁵⁶ FBI Report, 5 January 1951.

⁵⁷ FBI Report, 17 June 1952.

⁵⁸ Gordon Kahn was a screenwriter who was among the original 19 Hollywood screenwriters to be blacklisted, before the list was reduced to 10. He assisted those who remained on the list and was the first to publish a book on the hearings, Hollywood on Trial, published in 1948. Kahn moved to Mexico in 1951 rather than face the second wave of HUAC hearings in 1951. Charles Humboldt was an art critic and literary editor of Masses and Mainstream, a Marxist review and, according to Zimet, “another American refugee from political persecution.” McGilligan and Buhle, eds., Tender Comrades, 731.

⁵⁹ FBI Report, 9 March 1951.

⁶⁰ FBI Report, 17 March 1955.

⁶¹ Haynes and Klehr, Venona, p. 279.

⁶² FBI Report, 2 February 1954.

⁶³ FBI Report, 11 May 1953.

⁶⁴ Haynes and Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, 181–3.

⁶⁵ Venona, 1350 KGB New York to Moscow, 17 August 1943.

⁶⁶ FBI Report, 11 May 1953.

⁶⁷ FBI Report, 11 March 1955.

⁶⁸ FBI Report, 17 March 1955.

⁶⁹ FBI Report, 11 March 1955.

⁷⁰ FBI Report, 2 February 1954.

⁷¹ FBI Report, 17 March 1955.

⁷⁶ Young, “Conversation with Mary Oppen,” 38.

⁷² Rouverol, Refugees from Hollywood, 125.

⁷³ McGilligan and Buhle, eds., Tender Comrades, 742.

⁷⁴ FBI Report, 26 July 1956.

⁷⁵ FBI Report, 16 December 1953.

⁷⁷ FBI Report, 27 June 1957.

⁷⁸ FBI Report, 16 May 1960.

⁷⁹ FBI Report, 26 January 1962.

⁸⁰ Cope, ed., “A Selection from ‘Daybook One’, ‘Daybook Two’, and ‘Daybook Three’ from The Working Papers of George Oppen,” Germ, 3 (spring 1999), 216.

⁸¹ Schiffer, “Interview with George Oppen,” 14.

⁸² Young, ed., “Selections from George Oppen's Daybook”, 8–9.

⁸³ Cynthia Anderson, ed., “Meaning is to be Here,” Conjunctions, 10 (1987), 206.

⁸⁴ Michael Heller, e-mail to author, 11 September 2006.

⁸⁵ Anderson, ed., “Meaning is to be Here,” 192.

⁸⁶ DuPlessis, ed., “The Anthropologist of Myself”, Sulfur, 26 (fall 1988), 148.

⁸⁷ Dembo, “Interview with George Oppen,” Contemporary Writer, 179.