Top 12 Quotes & Sayings by George Oppen

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American poet George Oppen.

Last updated on November 7, 2024.

George Oppen was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He returned to poetry—and to the United States—in 1958, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969.

American - Poet | April 24, 1908 - July 7, 1984

Source: Wikipedia

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.

George Oppen

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

George Oppen

There are situations which cannot honorably be met by art.

George Oppen

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.

George Oppen

Truth, also is the pursuit of it.

George Oppen

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

George Oppen

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.

George Oppen

Things explain each other, not themselves.

George Oppen

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

George Oppen

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.

George Oppen

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.

George Oppen

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.

George Oppen