George Oppen Quotations

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.

A discrete series is a series of terms each of which is empirically derived, each one of which is empirically true. And this is the reason for the fragmentary character of those poems.

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.

Things explain each other, not themselves.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.