"In his poems, George Oppen wanted words to act out “truthful, lived experience.” His poetry is very literally a practice of perception. He even speaks of emotion “as the ability to perceive.” The syntax of an Oppen poem rivets our attention to both word and world in an enactment of intentional consciousness, the very act of perception and thought coming into being, of language and feeling arising as experience. His poems can be intricate, the syntax polyvalent, the disclosure nonlinear and difficult to render into anything like statement. And as such, his poetry might be considered an expression of life. As the Biblical Isaiah reminds us, “it shall be a vexation only to understand.” Clarity is not the same thing as simplicity."