Meaning a Life

Mary Colby and George Oppen met in a college poetry class in Corvallis in 1926; they spent a night together, for which Mary was expelled, but by then they had chosen to leave their pasts behind to share a life full of "conversation, ideas, poetry, peers." In the 50 years that followed, they found all of those, as well as hoboing, art-making, sailing, donkeys and horses and dogs, war, the Communist Party, parenthood (after many lost attempts), labor and labor organizing, exile (both chosen and not—they spent many blacklisted years in Mexico) and return. Mary's account of their shared life—in her first book, published in her 70th year—is told with deliberate, simple eloquence, and it's a pleasure and a provocation to read of lives lived with such originality and courage.