George oppen a biography by
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MAL, Mary mistakenly refers to the I.W.W. as the International Workers of the World, a specifically anarcho-syndicalist organization with decidedly different agenda than the less mainstream I.W.W.
77 NCP, p. xv 78 The firm, Ackerman, Harris and Oppen, built and managed several famous theaters in the San Francisco area. The website Cinema Treasures (www.cinematreasures.org) describes two of them, The El Capitan and the Apollo. The El Capitan Theater, located at 2353 Mission Street, was designed by architect G. Albert Lansburgh in the Spanish Colonial Revival style with a Mexican Baroque façade, built at a cost of $1,250,000 and featuring 2,578 seats and demolished in 1964. According to the website, the theater was the “largest and most opulent of the many Mission Street houses” and the first to bring second run films in wide screen Cinema Scope to the Mission Street neighborhood until the late fall of 1953. Unfortunately its size and grandeur, with inherent operating costs, soon became a detriment rather than a benefit, and it soon became victim to the inroads of television. It closed first on July 24, 1956; re-opened on May 1, 1957, offering three features at reduced admission prices, and then closed permanently on December 15, 1957. The Apollo, located at 965 Geneva Avenue “originally opened as the Amazon Theater for the Ackerman & Harris circuit,” on 14 September 1928; the feature was Ralph Graves in The Swell Head. The theater was “built at the cost of $350,000 by the Reid Brothers. A 963-seat theater, it had been used as a church as late as the 1980’s and by 2002 had been converted into a Walgreen’s drugstore. A restoration effort, the State Theater Project, salvaged a number of the fixtures and display cases and even the theater’s original curtain, discovered to have been removed from the State Theater in Monterey. “Though the Amazon will no longer be a theater,” the website states, “at least much has been salvaged from it to be enjoyed and reused in other buildings, and the exterior will give ample evidence of its former use.” According to MAL, George may have been employed as manager at one or both of these theaters following his suspension from college. 79 SL: 100 81 Young. p. 43 82 In a poem dedicated to Diane Meyer, “Niece,” George, remembers “The watchman at the beach/Telling us the war had ended --- / That was the first world war/Half a century ago --- my sister/Had a ribbon in her hair.” NCP, p. 147 83 It is estimated that the theater community of San Francisco lost roughly $400,000 in revenues. 84 The exact nature of this abuse is unknown as George exhibited an understandable reticence to discuss it in greater detail. 85 Anderson, p. 193-194 86 Young, p. 44 87 MAL, p. 97-98 88 SL, p. 223 89 Young, p. 46 90 Anderson, p. 195 91 SL, p. 119 92 In a letter to David Ignatow, George recalled “[(a student where I once read asked me what my ‘influences’ were, and I started listing: Descartes, Bergson, Henry James, Hopper, the Flemish painters, Blake - - - - that is, poets scattered among the others. Accurate, I think; probably for an of us / / (((and in honest, I should have added: The Child’s Garden of Verses, the Oz Books, the Arthur stories etc))))” SL, p. 149 93 Schiffer, p. 12-13 94 Oppen, George. “The Mind’s Own Place.” In Kulchur 10 (Spring, 1962), p. 6-7 95 SL, p. 11, 14 96 SL, p. 373 97 MAL, p. 75 98 SL, p. 263. The line “O wind, if winter ever comes” is from Shelley. 99 Schiffer, p. 12 100 Hatlen, Burton, and Harvey Mandel. “Poetry and Politics: A Conversation with George and Mary Oppen.” In George Oppen: Man and Poet. Burton Hatlen, ed. Orono, Maine: National Poetry Foundation (1981), p. 25 101 A line of poetry “evincing,” as Rachel Blau DuPlessis notes, “a preternatural turn to sincerity of an urban (as well as urbane) realism.” According to DuPlessis, the city of Pelham had slate sidewalks. SL, p. 365 102 Anderson, p. 193 103 DuPlessis, Rachel Blau, ed. “The Anthropologist of Myself: A Selection from the Working Papers.” Sulfur 26 (Spring 1990), p. 146 104 Apparently they were of lasting interest; of the handful of George’s personal collection to be donated to the UCSD Mandeville library are to be found a single volume of Keats and a volume containing work by both poets. 105 Anderson, p. 195 106 SL, p. 335-336 107 Anderson, p. 195 108 Englebert and West, p. 12 109 DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Chronology in Selected Poems by George Oppen (New York: New Directions Press, 2003), p. 191. Hereafter cited as SP. As DuPlessis notes, the exact reason for the quarantine remain unknown. 110 Exactly how George was punished for this significant offence is unknown. Today, punishment for a similar crime would be severe, something approximate to vehicular manslaughter. Yet the times, the prejudices of the still raucous Pacific city and, potentially, George’s wealthy father, conspired to intervene. 111 SP, 191 113 MAL, p. 40 114 MAL, p. 42 115 MAL, p. 41 116 Mary Oppen, San Francisco Poetry Center reading, November 29th, 1978. 117 MAL, 55-56 118 MAL, p. 43 119 MAL, p. 54 120 MAL, p. 43 121 MAL, p. 49 122 MAL, p. 65 123 MAL, p. 59 124 MAL, p. 46 125 MAL, p. 47 126 MAL, p. 52-53 127 MAL, p. 44-45 128 MAL, p. 50 129 MAL, p. 56 130 MAL, p. 66 131 MAL, p. 50 132 MAL, p. 66 133 Young, p. 27 134 MAL, p. 56 135 MAL, p. 50 136 MAL, p. 66 137 MAL, p. 30 138 MAL. p. 55-57 Download 195.74 Kb. Share with your friends:
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