Mary Colby

Mary Oppen
Born	November 28, 1908 Kalispell, Montana, U.S.
Died	May 14, 1990 (aged 81) Berkley, California, U.S.
Occupation	writer, artist
Education	attended Oregon State University

Mary Oppen (November 28, 1908 – May 14, 1990) was an American activist, artist, photographer, poet and writer.

Oppen was born in Kalispell, Montana to Ora and Alice (Conklin) Colby; her father was a postmaster, and her mother was a singer. She was raised in the Pacific Northwest and later met George Oppen in 1928 while both were students at Oregon State University. Although they were, respectively, suspended (George) and expelled (Mary) for staying out together overnight, they formed a serious commitment, eventually to be a lifetime bond. Together they travelled extensively and this began the succession of friendships and contacts out of which the poetry and politics of George and Mary Oppen grew.

Fifty years later in her autobiography Meaning A Life (1978), Mary Oppen took note of these times, observing:

We were constantly searching--searching in our travels in our pursuit of friends and in our conversation concerning all that we saw and felt about the world. We were searching for a way to avoid the trap that our class backgrounds held for us if we relented in our attempts to escape from them ... [W]e had learned at college that poetry was being written in our own times, and that in order for us to write it was not necessary for us to ground ourselves in the academic; the ground we needed was the roads we were travelling.

After these initial peripatetic years together, they finally took up residence in New York City in the late 1920s. There they joined a circle of artists and writers, among whom were the poets Charles Reznikoff and Louis Zukofsky. During the 1930s the Oppens involved themselves in leftist political movements and joined the Communist Party USA in 1935 after the seventh World Congress of the Communist Parties called for intellectuals to join in a united front against fascism and war.

After World War II, in which George Oppen was severely wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, the Oppens were persecuted by the US government for their leftist activities during the Depression. Rather than testify against friends and associates, the Oppens decided to flee to Mexico in 1950, where they found their way to Mexico City's United States emigre and refugee circle. In the late 1950s George Oppen began writing again after a 25-year hiatus and the Oppens soon relocated to New York City.

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