SOURCE: “France” and “New York City,” in Meaning a Life: An Autobiography, Black Sparrow Press, 1978, pp. 117-39, 143-63.

In the following excerpt, Mary Oppen describes the life she and her husband led from the late twenties to the beginning of the Second World War, and tells of their transition from avant-garde artists to communist organizers.

George and I avoided joining the groups that surrounded the artists and writers we visited. We had found our beginnings in our own roots, and we had found Zukofsky, Williams and Pound; we were twenty-two years old and full of ourselves. We wanted to observe and learn from the impressions we received as well as from the reading we were doing. Attachments beyond these would have been an encumbrance; we were searching for freedom in which to pursue our own truths. We did not claim the people we met, and I think we...