In Which I Got Sunburned From the Heat of Hell You Got a Sore Throat From All The Screaming Out

If I were to name the poets who have been of decisive importance to me—Charles Reznikoff and Zukofsky as a person, his conversation, not his poetry—although again as with Pound while I can make an awful lot of objections to part of A, the opening words , “A/Round fiddles playing Bach,’ have rung in my ears for a long time and always will, I imagine.Reznikoff has been the more important to me, consciously at least. And otherwise is what I have to explain –really Blake is more important to me than Williams, and several philosophers may be more important to me than Pound. The contemporary poets aren’t the most important thing in life, with the exception of those few that really matter to me.

–George Oppen

“Of Being Numerous” — George Oppen (mp3)

George Oppen is a great poet. Never a personal favorite of mine, he and his wife Mary were Communists, and they spent a lot of time in Mexico. They did a lot of nice things for people, especially other Communists. George even gave up poetry for the political cause:

Unable to bring himself to write verse propaganda, Oppen abandoned poetry and joined the Communist Party serving as election campaign manager for Brooklyn in 1936 and helping organize the Utica New York Milk Strike. He and Mary were also active for relief and Oppen was tried and acquitted on a charge of felonious assault on the police.

He eventually became disillusioned from the party and returned to poetry. As his wife noted, “a life had to be lived from which to write.” They were together forever. They were inseparable. She outlived George by six years–he died after a trip to Israel. He was Jewish, she was not. She died of ovarian cancer in 1990.

As her autobiography records, most of her life was around Jewish people and she felt like a little bit of an outsider. She was called “Shiksa” a lot.

In this excerpt from Meaning a Life, she records the dissolution of the friendship of her husband and Louis Zukofsky, who doesn’t come off well. The two families took an ill-fated trip to Mexico, and then:

After we had returned to New York and George was writing The Materials, our relationship with Louis was no longer the same. We loved and cherished Louis still from our early friendship and from George’s relationship with Louis when George had been the nineteen-year old poet learning from Louis. “He taught me everything,” said George. But now, with George at fifty returned to poetry, and Louis a few years older, the relationship was a different one, one of equals. George was writing out of many years of his life; he was full of his own poetry, and he was about to be published again. And again, Louis asked, “Do you like your poetry better than mine?”

With a lifetime of poetry to be written, George answered, “Yes.”

We went for a few more walks together, but Celia ceased to join us, and then Louis stopped coming. Our friendship was at an end. I think the Zukofskys were moving into a very private world, to which very few were admitted.

You can buy Meaning a Life here.

“For What It’s Worth” — The Cardigans (mp3)

“Elisa” — Serge Gainsbourg (mp3)

“She Belongs to Me” — Robyn Hitchcock (mp3)

“I Never Loved You Anyway” –The Corrs (mp3)

PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING

We pissed some people off as per the usual.

Molly reflected on Mindfreak.

Blogging’s so much easier when you quote prostitutes.