George Oppen Quotes

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

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.

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 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.

Things explain each other, not themselves.

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.

There are situations which cannot honorably be met by art.

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

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

[It is not] the poet's business to use verse as an advanced form of rhetoric, nor to give to political statements the aura of eternal truth.