Steel Wagstaff

Trying to do good things for good reasons

Category: Lessons from Oppen’s Letters

  • Expressing Gratitude

    Expressing Gratitude

    In 1934, when George Oppen was 26 years old, he published Discrete Series, a volume of his poetry. It included a preface from Ezra Pound, then living in Rapallo, Italy, which ended with these lines: “I salute a serious craftsman, a sensibility which is not every man’s sensibility and which has not been got out of any…

  • How to Write a Letter to the Editor

    I know I keep writing about Oppen and his letters, but I just can’t help it. Today I was typing up my notes from his mid-60s letters, and remembered a pretty tremendous letter he wrote to Lita Hornick, then the managing editor of Kulchur, in response to Kulchur‘s decision to print “Soirées,” a Felix Pollak poem…

  • How To Write a “DARE” Letter

    So there are “kids, don’t do drugs” lectures, and then there are “kids, don’t do drugs” lectures (like Tolstoy’s “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves”–an absolute classic). I grew up Mormon, which meant that the Word of Wisdom (Section 89 of the Doctrine and Covenants, a book of LDS scripture) formed the bedrock of my attitude…