Oppen declared: "I'm really concerned with the substantive, with the subject of the sentence, with what we are talking about, and not rushing over the subject-matter in order to make a comment about it."

To make a thing of it—the poem—declaring itself:

                 The edge of the ocean,
                 The shore: here
                 Somebody's lawn,
                 By the water.

And here—if your breath bothers to shape the articulation as articulateness you will find—characteristic of this poet—each word loving itself—that sacrament of dancing together Eliot described in East Coker. As if the ear perceived what the mind breathed.

You will say: But it's not profound. Yet love is revealed in just such quiet modulations, such excellence of attention, where the lover does not have to point to himself to exist. (pp. 85-6)

Oppen has a transparent faith—an active confidence—a loyalty to—his word—which is...