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George Oppen
6 quotes
“They have lost the metaphysical sense Of the future, they feel themselves The end of a chain Of lives, single lives And we know that lives Are single And cannot defend The metaphysic On which rest The boundaries Of our distances.”
George Oppen (1908–1984) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: from "Of Being Numerous" #26, 1968; New Collected Poems, New Directions, 2002,
“'O city ladies' Your coats wrapped, Your hips a possession Your shoes arched Your walk is sharp Your breasts Pertain to lingerie”
George Oppen (1908–1984) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: from "Discrete Series", 1934; New Collected Poems, New Directions, 2002,
“And we saw the seed, The minuscule Sequoia seed In the museum by the tremendous slab Of the tree. And imagined the seed In soil and the growth quickened So that we saw the seed reach out, forcing Earth thru itself into bark, wood, the green Needles of a redwood until the tree Stood in the room without soil— How much of the earth's Crust has lived The seed’s violence! The shock is metaphysical.”
George Oppen (1908–1984) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Return" st. 2, 1962; New Collected Poems, New Directions, 2002,
“The steel worker on the girder Learned not to look down, and does his work And there are words we have learned Not to look at, Not to look for substance Below them. But we are on the verge Of vertigo.”
George Oppen (1908–1984) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Building of the Skyscraper" st. 1, 1965; Collected Poems of George Oppen", New Directions, 1976,
“things explain each other, Not themselves.”
George Oppen (1908–1984) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: This in Which (1965), "A Narrative", 3
“Perhaps what I would like is a truly democratic culture. Not a polemic nor a moralistic culture in the arts but a culture which permits one man to speak to another honestly and modestly and in freedom and to say what he thinks and what he feels, to express his doubts and his fears, his immoral as well as his moral impulses, to say what he thinks is true and what he thinks is false, and what he likes and what he does not like. What I am against is that we should all engage in the most vigorous and most polemic lying to each other for each other's benefit. — Who could have the conceit, the self-confidence to believe that that is what we should do throughout all the rest of human history?”
George Oppen (1908–1984) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Charles Humboldt (mid-1962), p. 64