Roberto Tejada, The George Oppen Memorial Lecture: December 12, 2015

Steve Dickison introduces Roberto Tejada, who extends his thanks and opens with a citation from Kenneth Burke. His talk focuses on George, Mary, and Linda Oppen's time living in Mexico City, 1950-58, during the U.S. McCarthy Era. Tejada reads Oppen's poem "Eclogue" from The Materials (New Directions, 1962). He remarks on the theme of "population" in the poetry and discusses Oppen's silence in poetry during the years from 1934 (his publication of his first book, Discrete Series) to 1958 (near the end of their Mexican sojourn), and remarks on George and Mary Oppen's isolation from mainstream Mexican society. He reads from an interview, citing Oppen's work as a craftsman who, forbidden by Mexican law to craft material goods for sale, set up a furniture manufacturing business that employed a local woodworker. Tejada displays and describes photos of Oppen's furniture and remarks on the rise in popularity of such retailers as Sears, Roebuck and Company in Mexico. He then displays photos of Oppen's woodcarvings, comparing some of these with Mary's photographs and with contemporary Mexican artworks, and discusses George and Mary's becoming students at "La Esmeralda" Art School (Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado). He reads Oppen's poem "Carpenter's Boat," from This In Which and a portion of "Tourist Eye" from The Materials. Tejada discusses the work of several contemporary Mexican artists, among them German native Mathias Goeritz, who embraced the Mexican cultural environment and was claimed as a Mexican artist. He then recounts Mary Oppen's recalling of a dream George had about rusting copper and the recognition of his ultimate fear of "rusting" as a poet, and offers an interpretation of the dream, while citing from Karl Marx, Sarah Kofman, and Hannah Arendt. Tejada closes by reading a portion of Oppen's poem "Blood from the Stone," beginning "Together, and among the others..." from The Materials.

In response to questions from the audience (largely inaudible on the recording), Tejada remarks on George and Mary's daughter, Linda Oppen, as their primary translator due to her parents' rudimentary Spanish. He discusses George's isolation from the public sphere and communal culture of Mexico, and the limited extent of his involvement in the visual culture of Mexico. He remarks on George's having been wounded during World War II, and the likelihood of his suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He discusses the Oppens' early decision to leave the Communist Party USA as analogous to their later refusal to participate in the exiled Hollywood Blacklist community in Mexico City, in their attempt to maintain an autonomy. And he speaks of the austerity of the Oppens' lifestyle in Mexico as analogous to the austerity of mid-century modernist furniture and architecture.