I think Oppen’s poetry is awful.

Of course I think he was a noble person, in his way.

But he could also be an aesthetic tyrant.

I am very close with his niece, who lived with him for a while in her childhood.She started writing under his tutelage and “encouragement”. But is it encouraging to tell an eleven-year-old girl, “You must stand by every word”? NO.

His avuncular injunctions still echo repressively in her adult head. It makes me very angry to think about this. Why couldn’t he have told her she could use writing to explore and to make stuff up?

Anyway, I think his poetry is really boring.