George Oppen Quotes

There are situations which cannot honorably be met by art.

It is necessary to study these words you have written, for the words have a longer history than you have and say more than you know.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

The self is no mystery, the mystery is / That there is something for us to stand on

The meaning of a poem is in the cadences and the shape of the lines and the pulse of the thought which is given by those lines.

A pure mathematical series would be one in which each term is derived from the preceding term by a rule.

Clarity, clarity, surely clarity is the most beautiful thing in the world, A limited, limiting clarity I have not and never did have any motive of poetry But to achieve clarity.

The first question at that time in poetry was simply the question of honesty, of sincerity.

Things explain each other, not themselves.