The situation of the Old Left was the theory of Socialist Realism, etc. It seemed pointless to argue. We stayed carefully away from people who wrote for the New Masses.

The short-lived publishing venture managed to publish works by William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. George Oppen: Man and Poet (Man/Woman and Poet Series) (Man and Poet Series) National Poetry Foundation 1981. By 1942 Oppen was deferred from military service while working in the defense industry.

He returned to poetry — and to the United States — in 1958 and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and later moved to Mexico to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee.