Oppen (in letter to Rachel Blau DuPlessis): "There are certain things, appearances, around which the understanding gathers. They hold the meanings which make it possible to live, they are one's sense of reality and the possibility of meaning."
Hejinian: "His writing, as a result, has an indexical character" (83)
Oppen again, in interview with L. S. Dembo: "the nouns do refere to something; that it's there, that it's true, the whole implication of these nouns; that appearances represent reality, whether or not they misrepresent it: that this in which this thing takes place, this thing is here, and that these things do take place"
Oppen attempting to produce "the sense of the poet's self among things"
"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"
"the substantive for its own sake"