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8 unusual facts about George Oppen


Claude Royet-Journoud

A champion of American poetry since the 1960s, when he translated George Oppen and published John Ashbery and Louis Zukofsky, he has edited (with Emmanuel Hocquard) two anthologies of American poetry, 21+1: Poètes améicains d'aujourd'hui (1986) and 49+1: nouveaux poètes américains (1991).

Daniel Gutstein

Gutstein has cited the poet Paul Celan as being a major source of inspiration, and credits a number of American poets and fiction writers such as Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen, Lyn Hejinian, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor, and James Baldwin, as favorites.

George Oppen

Effectively volunteering for duty, Oppen saw active service on the Maginot Line and the Ardennes; he was seriously wounded south of the Battle of the Bulge.

In 1929 and 1930 he and Mary spent some time in New York, where they met Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff, musician Tibor Serly, and designer Russel Wright, among others.

Jeremy Hooker

When asked, in an interview, about influences Hooker listed Richard Jeffries, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas and later David Jones, along with the American Objectivist poets William Carlos Williams and George Oppen.

John Taggart

Taggart's approach to the poem is strongly rooted in Objectivist poetics, particularly the works of Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen.

Norma Cole

"The Poetics of Vertigo" --- delivered as the 1998 "George Oppen Memorial Lecture"--- won the Robert D. Richardson Non-Fiction Award.

Peter Gizzi

Working overnight at the treatment center, Gizzi read George Oppen's Collected Poems, along with H.D., Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Federico García Lorca, Baudelaire, Rimbaud "and almost anything published by Burning Deck."


Richard Blevins

He has written a dozen articles (on Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, George Oppen, Penelope Fitzgerald, Louis Zukofsky, Kenneth Patchen, Paul Blackburn, Robert Kelly, among others) for encyclopedias (DLB, Encyclopedia of American Literature, Encyclopedia of World Literature, and The Ezra Pound Encyclopedia), and many essays and reviews for journals, especially Sagetrieb.


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