By 1925, this period of personal and psychic transition culminated in a serious car wreck in which George was driver and a young passenger was killed.

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.

In 1930 George and Mary moved to California and then to France, where, thanks to their financial input, they were able to establish To Publishers and act as printer/publishers with Zukofsky as editor.

In this situation, as in so many others, I remember with attentiveness the poetry and example of George Oppen, who wanted to look, to see what was out there, evaluate its damage and contradictions, to say scrupulously in a pared and intense language not what was easy or right or neat or consoling, but what he felt when all the platitudes and banalities were stripped away.

Unable to bring himself to write verse propaganda, Oppen abandoned poetry and joined the Communist Party USA, serving as election campaign manager for Brooklyn in 1936, and helping organize the Utica New York Milk Strike.

Effectively volunteering for duty, Oppen saw active service on the Maginot Line and the Ardennes; he was seriously wounded near Bad Urach Germany.

Although now less politically active, the Oppens were aware that their pasts were certain to attract the attention of Joseph McCarthy's Senate committee and decided to move to Mexico.

[3] During these admittedly bitter years in Mexico, George ran a small furniture making business and was involved in an expatriate intellectual community.

[7] But Oppen also suggested other factors led to his return to the US and to poetry, including his daughter's well-being, because she was beginning college at Sarah Lawrence.

During this time, George's final illness, Alzheimer's disease, began to manifest itself with confusion, failing memory, and other losses.

George Oppen, age 76, died of pneumonia with complications from Alzheimer's disease in a convalescent home in California on July 7, 1984.

For more information on Oppen's posthumous publications, such as his Selected Letters and New Collected Poems, see Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Michael Davidson.