intensity justified

Poetry is the language of intensity. Because we are all going to die, an expression of intensity is justified.

—C. D. Wright, Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil (Copper Canyon Press, ) p. 61.

moment of conviction

The first question in poetry at that time was simply the question of honesty, sincerity. The point for me, and I think for Louis [Zukofsky], too, was the attempt to construct a meaning, to construct a method of thought from the imagist technique of poetry, from the imagist intensity of vision. If no one were going to challenge me, I would say “a test of truth.” If I had to back it up I’d say anyway, “a test of sincerity.” That there is a moment, in actual time, when you believe something to be true, and you construct a meaning from those moments of conviction.

—George Oppen, quoted in Robert Hass’s What Light Can Do (Ecco, 2012)