James Oppenheim

James Oppenheim (1882-1932), was an American poet, novelist, and editor. A lay analyst and an early follower of C.G. Jung, Oppenheim was also the founder and editor of The Seven Arts, an important early 20th-century literary magazine.

Life
Oppenheim was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 24, 1882, the son of Joseph and Matilda (Schloss) Oppenheim. His father died when he was six and his family's circumstances changed. He was educated in public schools and at Columbia University.

Oppenheim married Lucy Seckel and had two children, Ralph and James Jr. (alias Garrett). Seckel filed for divorce following the publication of his 1914 novel, Idle Wives.

Oppenheim was assistant head worker at the Hudson Guild Settlement in New York from 1901-03. He then worked as a teacher and acting superintendent at the Hebrew Technical School For Girls in New York from 1905-07.

He was a well-known writer of short stories and novels. His poetry followed Walt Whitman's model of free verse ruminations on "social and democratic aspects of life". Oppenheim depicted labor troubles with Fabian and suffragist themes in his novel, The Nine-Tenths (1911) and in his famous poem Bread and Roses (1911). The slogan Bread and Roses is now commonly associated with the pivotal 1912 textile workers' strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The poem was later set to music in 1976 by Mimi Fariña and again in 1990 by John Denver.

At The Seven Arts magazine he served as primary editor and worked with Waldo Frank, George Jean Nathan, Louis Untermeyer and Paul Rosenfeld from 1916-17, until he was blacklisted due to his opposition to US entry into World War I. Notable writers who contributed to the magazine under his guidance included Sherwood Anderson, Van Wyck Brooks, Max Eastman, Robert Frost, D.H. Lawrence, Vachel Lindsay and Amy Lowell.

Additionally, he contributed short stories, articles, and poems to American Magazine, American Mercury, Century, Collier's, Freeman, Harper's, Hearst's, New Republic, and The Thinker.

After the collapse of The Seven Arts, he studied and wrote about psychology, in particular the works of Carl Jung. Oppenheim died in New York City on August 4, 1932.

Publications
Oppenheim's published works include Monday Morning and Other Poems (1909); Pay Envelopes (1911); The Nine-Tenths(1911); The Olympian (1912); Idle Wives (1914); Songs For The New Age (1914); The Beloved (1915); War and Laughter (1916); The Book Of Self (1917); The Solitary (1919); The Mystic Warrior (1921); Golden Bird (1923); The Sea (collected poetry - 1924); Behind Your Front (1926); and American Types: A Preface To Analytic Psychology (1931).