Cultural Writing. Poetics. "Susan Thackrey's meeting with George Oppen's poetry and other writingsà is as courageous, revealing, and unfailingly 'studiously unprepared' an encounter of poet with poet as I know. She dares the risk of stepping in to the heart of Oppen's lifelong philosophic and artistic task, meanwhile unceasingly opening doors the rest of us might follow thru"-Steve Dickinson. "Susan Thackrey's essay provides a deep and precise account of Oppen as intellectual and as poet. It is especially noteworthy for its clear and persuasive account of how the poem can be 'mind in the world, coming into being, not mind or world, not one being a content or about the other'" - Charles Altieri.