 Gloria Oden studied poetry with Kimon Friar, Louise Bogan, and Léonie Adams, and later associated with Arna Bontemps, Robert Hayden, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and Mark Van Doren.She was friends with Langston Hughes and Sam Allen, read with Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, and worked in the same law firm as Pauli Murray.As Oden herself describes, "I am sure but if you realize how today young poets know each other, have opportunities to publish each other, move themselves forward in the literary world, you see how much of a hit and miss it was for me.